President Joe Biden's administration has asked the Supreme Court to end a Trump-era policy under which migrants seeking asylum in the United States must wait in Mexico while their cases are being considered.
The Justice Department has asked the conservative-leaning high court to review decisions made by earlier courts that left the migration program in place, according to legal documents reviewed by AFP on Thursday.
Under then-president Donald Trump's "Remain in Mexico" program, tens of thousands of non-Mexican asylum seekers -- mostly from Central America -- were sent back over the border pending the outcome of their applications.
Biden, a Democrat, has sought to dismantle the program, officially called the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP).
Those efforts have faced setbacks in the US court system, and most recently an appeals court ruled this month that the program should continue.
In a legal document filed on Wednesday, the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to review the case, arguing that the program "exposes migrants to unacceptable" risks and that previous court decisions were based on "erroneous interpretations" of the law.
The United States is seeing a massive influx of migrants at its southern border.
Between January 2019 and December 2020, at least 70,000 asylum seekers, most of them from Central America, were returned to Mexico under the "Remain in Mexico" program, triggering a humanitarian crisis.
AFP/ASH
