Council and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Stop Texas Court from Reinstatement of the Migrant Protection Protocols

This amicus brief urges the Supreme Court to stop the reinstatement of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forced asylum seekers to wait in dangerous conditions in Mexico for their U.S. immigration court hearings. The brief highlights many critical and devastating facts the lower court and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ignored in their decisions: MPP was a humanitarian catastrophe -- asylum seekers were murdered, raped, kidnapped, extorted, and compelled to live in squalid conditions where they faced significant procedural barriers to meaningfully presenting their protection claims. But the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ignored the serious and intractable problems the government has now acknowledged with MPP, ordering the Department of Homeland Security to reinstate MPP.

The brief argues that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals 's decision should be tossed out because it rests on bad facts:  that MPP effectively (1) deterred migration, indicated by increased arrivals following MPP’s suspension in January 2021; and (2) reduced meritless asylum claims, indicated by the high rates of in absentia removal orders issued to MPP enrollees. The Council and signatories ask the Supreme Court to halt the lower court's poorly reasoned and factually flawed decision.

This brief was authored in partnership with the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, Human Rights First, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.