Photo: Jarek Tuszyński / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to restore the power of immigration judges to temporarily pause deportation cases, leaving in place an agreement between President Donald Trump's administration and Republican-led Texas that ended the practice.
The justices rejected an emergency request from three US cities — Baltimore, New Haven and Columbus — and the immigrant legal advocacy group Centro Legal de la Raza to temporarily block the agreement while the legal battle continues. The court issued a brief, one-sentence order without explaining its decision, as is common for emergency requests, and none of the justices publicly dissented.
What is administrative closure?
The practice at issue, known as "administrative closure," has been used by immigration judges for decades to temporarily remove certain deportation cases from their active caseloads. Judges often used it when another legal process involving the same person was still pending and could affect whether they could be deported — for example, a visa petition or an appeal against a criminal conviction.
Administrative closure paused deportation proceedings while such matters were considered. It did not automatically grant immigrants legal status or permanently end their deportation cases. But over the years, the procedure was applied in hundreds of thousands of deportation cases.
How the Trump administration and Texas ended it
In 2024, former President Joe Biden's administration introduced a regulation that formally established the rules for administrative closure, saying it helped immigration judges manage heavy caseloads and ensured fair treatment for immigrants. The regulation replaced an earlier rule from Trump's first term in 2020, which had been blocked by the courts.
After Trump returned to office in 2025, the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the immigration courts, announced it would not defend the Biden-era regulation against a legal challenge. Texas then sued, arguing the regulation allowed immigration judges to "effectively grant indefinite amnesty to aliens illegally present in this country."
On June 22, the Trump administration and Texas jointly asked US District Judge Reed O'Connor in Wichita Falls, Texas, to approve an agreement declaring the Biden-era rule unlawful. The agreement was filed the same day Texas brought its lawsuit, and O'Connor approved it that day, permanently blocking the regulation across the country.
Baltimore, New Haven, Columbus and Centro Legal de la Raza sought to defend the Biden-era regulation, but Judge O'Connor rejected their request to join the case. After the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals refused to pause the agreement, they approached the Supreme Court — accusing the administration of working with Texas through "manufactured litigation" to scrap a regulation it opposed.
What both sides said
In a statement to Reuters, the cities and their lawyers from the liberal legal group Democracy Forward said they were disappointed with the court's decision. "Eliminating these protections puts vulnerable people at greater risk of deportation and undermines public safety in communities across the country," they said. "This dangerous abuse of the judicial process threatens the rule of law and sets a troubling precedent for dismantling federal policies without meaningful public participation or judicial scrutiny."
Texas and the Trump administration, by contrast, have argued that administrative closure allowed immigrants living in the US without legal status to remain in the country indefinitely — effectively working as a form of amnesty. Ending it is part of Trump's broader crackdown on immigration.
The Supreme Court's decision leaves the nationwide block on the policy in place while the underlying challenge continues. It is a setback for the cities and the advocacy group, but it is not a final ruling on the merits of administrative closure itself.
Sources: Reuters, as reported by The Financial Express and MSN (Tuesday order, one sentence, no public dissent, emergency applicants, June 22 agreement, O'Connor approval, 5th Circuit refusal, Democracy Forward statement); SCOTUSblog (Tuesday decision, agreement between the administration and Texas). The characterization of the litigation as "manufactured" is the applicants' allegation, not a court finding.