A one-day court fight
The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to revive a rule that let immigration judges put some deportation cases on hold. The order was unsigned, ran a few lines, and drew no noted dissents. It leaves in place a court agreement between Texas and the Justice Department that wiped out the policy.
The sequence that produced the agreement was unusually short. Texas filed suit in federal court in Wichita Falls in June, where the case landed before Chief U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor, the only federal judge in that division. Hours later, the state and the Justice Department jointly asked him to enter a final judgment for Texas, to strike the rule and to bar the Executive Office for Immigration Review from adopting anything similar. O'Connor granted all of it on the same day.
What administrative closure did
The rule, adopted in 2024, allowed judges to suspend proceedings rather than decide them. In practice it gave people time to seek another route to stay in the country, including asylum applications handled by a different agency, or to help prosecutors as a witness or victim.
Texas argued that the immigration court system had no authority to write the rule, and that federal law requires a judge at the end of a case to decide whether a person is removable. The Justice Department under President Donald Trump agreed and declined to defend the regulation.
Cities lose on standing
Baltimore, New Haven and Columbus, three cities with large immigrant populations, joined Centro Legal de la Raza in August to defend the rule on appeal, since neither Texas nor the federal government would. O'Connor rejected that attempt, ruling the cities had no legal right to sue and had not shown immediate harm. They argued that removing the rule would cost them money and leave residents exposed; the judge was not persuaded.
An appeals court let the agreement stand, and the challengers went to the Supreme Court. The justices denied the request four days after the briefs were complete. Immigration judges are now expected to close cases with a decision rather than an indefinite pause.