High Court finalizes end to federal pause on deportation cases

The Supreme Court allowed a deal between Texas and the Department of Justice to take effect on Tuesday, formally ending a Biden-era rule on immigration. The justices acted with no noted dissents, leaving in place a lower court ruling that struck down the regulation.

The rule, adopted in 2024, set out how immigration judges could use a practice called administrative closure to pause deportation proceedings. This often applied to cases where migrants were pursuing other forms of immigration relief in federal courts. With the rule now gone, that specific procedure for putting cases on hold has been removed from federal immigration law.

Texas filed its lawsuit in June, arguing the rule lacked proper legal authority. The Department of Justice sided with the state, asking the judge to vacate the rule and bar similar regulations in the future. U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor, appointed by President George W. Bush, granted that request on the same day the Justice Department made it.

Opponents accused the two parties of working together despite being formally on opposite sides of the lawsuit. In August, Baltimore, Maryland; New Haven, Connecticut; and Columbus, Ohio joined the advocacy group Centro Legal de la Raza in an attempt to intervene. They argued that eliminating the rule could lead to more deportations, reducing local tax revenues and giving them legal standing to challenge the agreement. Judge O'Connor rejected that argument.

The cities and the advocacy group asked the Supreme Court on Oct. 9 to temporarily block the lower court's judgment while their appeal proceeded. They accused Texas and the federal government of engaging in egregious collusion to eliminate the rule. Federal lawyers countered that the challengers lacked standing because they had not shown the concrete injury required for a federal court to consider their claims.

The High Court's decision leaves the Biden-era rule eliminated. The dispute over the process that ended the rule continues to draw criticism from opponents, but the legal framework for administrative closure is no longer in effect nationwide.