Supreme Court leaves in place the end of immigration judges' power to shelve deportation cases
Editorial illustration — Press Pass USAThe U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to reinstate the authority of immigration judges to temporarily postpone deportation cases, keeping in place an agreement between President Donald Trump's administration and Republican-governed Texas that bars the once-common practice.
The justices denied an emergency request by three U.S. cities, including Baltimore, and an immigrant legal advocacy group to halt the deal ending the practice, known as “administrative closure,” while litigation continues. The decision came as a brief, one-sentence order with no explanation, as is common for emergency requests, and no justice publicly dissented.
The administration and Texas filed the agreement in a federal court in Texas on June 22, the same day the state sued to challenge the procedure, and a federal judge approved it the same day. Baltimore and the other litigants said the federal government improperly colluded with Texas to secure the rule's invalidation; their lawyers, from the liberal legal group Democracy Forward, said eliminating the protection “puts vulnerable people at greater risk of deportation and undermines public safety in communities across the country.”
Immigration judges relied on administrative closure for decades to clear certain cases off busy dockets, including when separate proceedings involving the same person are pending that could prevent removal, such as a visa petition or an appeal of a criminal conviction. Critics, including Texas and the Trump administration, have said the practice allowed immigrants without legal status to remain indefinitely, acting in effect like an amnesty. The procedure has been applied over the years in hundreds of thousands of deportation cases.
Sources: Reuters (Oct 27, 2026); SCOTUSblog (Oct 27, 2026).
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