By Andrew Chung
Oct 27 (Reuters) - The US Supreme Court declined on Tuesday 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 US cities including Baltimore and an immigrant legal advocacy group to halt for now the deal ending the practice, known as "administrative closure,"
while litigation continues in the dispute.
The Supreme Court's decision, issued as a brief, one-sentence order, did not offer any explanation, as is common when it handles emergency requests. None of the justices publicly dissented from decision.
The administration and Texas filed the agreement in a federal court in Texas on June 22, the same day that the state sued to challenge the immigration court procedure. A federal judge swiftly approved the agreement on the same day. Baltimore and the other litigants said the federal government improperly colluded with Texas to secure the rule's invalidation.
Immigration judges relied on administrative closure for decades to clear certain deportation cases off their busy dockets, including when separate proceedings involving the same person are pending that could prevent removal, such as on a visa petition or an appeal of a criminal conviction.
Critics including Texas and the Trump administration have said administrative closure has allowed immigrants who lack legal status to remain indefinitely in the United States, acting in effect like an amnesty.
Administrative closure has been applied over the years in hundreds of thousands of deportation cases. Ending the practice is part of Trump's hardline approach toward immigrants.
In 2024, Biden's administration adopted a regulation that formally codified administrative closure procedures, concluding that it lets judges efficiently manage their caseloads and promote the fair treatment of immigrants. That regulation replaced a prior rule adopted in 2020 during Trump's first term in office that had been judicially blocked.
After Trump returned to office in 2025, the Justice Department office that oversees immigration courts, the Executive Office for Immigration Review, announced it would not defend the Biden rule against a legal challenge.
In a lawsuit, Texas argued that the rule lets immigration judges "effectively grant indefinite amnesty to aliens illegally present in this country."
Trump's administration and the state then jointly asked US District Judge Reed O'Connor in Wichita Falls, Texas, to approve an agreement declaring the Biden rule unlawful. O'Connor did so, blocking it permanently, nationwide.
Three municipalities — Baltimore, New Haven, Connecticut, and Columbus, Ohio — and the legal services provider, Centro Legal de la Raza, sought to intervene in the case to defend the rule, but O'Connor rejected their bid. The cities say they all have substantial immigrant populations.
The New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals declined to put the agreement on hold pending an appeal of O'Connor's decision.
The cities and Centro Legal de la Raza told the Supreme Court in a filing that Trump's administration circumvented a federal law governing agency procedures by using "manufactured litigation" with "ideologically aligned" Texas to eliminate a regulation it disliked.
"The need for interim relief is underscored by the collusion that infected this suit from its inception," they wrote.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; editing by Will Dunham)
