US Supreme Court rejects bid to restore immigration judges’ power to pause deportation cases

The US Supreme Court has declined to restore immigration judges’ power to temporarily pause deportation cases, leaving in place a nationwide agreement between President Donald Trump’s administration and Texas that ended the practice.

A few days back, in an emergency decision, the justices rejected a request from three US cities and an immigrant legal advocacy group to suspend the agreement while a legal challenge continues. The court issued a brief, one-sentence order without explaining its decision. No justice publicly dissented.

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The practice, known as administrative closure, allowed immigration judges to temporarily remove certain deportation cases from their active caseloads. It was commonly used when separate proceedings involving the same individual were pending, such as a visa petition or an appeal of a criminal conviction that could affect whether the person could be deported.

The decision leaves in place a nationwide ruling that blocked a regulation introduced under former President Joe Biden’s administration in 2024.

Why was the deportation rule challenged?

According to Reuters, Texas filed a lawsuit on June 22 challenging the use of administrative closure. The Trump administration and the state jointly sought approval of an agreement declaring the Biden-era regulation unlawful.

US District Judge Reed O’Connor approved the agreement on the same day, permanently blocking the regulation nationwide.

Texas and the Trump administration argued that administrative closure allowed immigrants without legal status to remain in the US indefinitely, effectively amounting to amnesty.

The Biden administration had defended the practice as a way for immigration judges to manage heavy caseloads more efficiently and ensure fair treatment of immigrants.

The 2024 regulation had formally established procedures for administrative closure, replacing a rule introduced during Trump’s first term in 2020 that had been blocked by the courts.

After Trump returned to office in 2025, the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration courts, announced that it would not defend the Biden-era rule against the legal challenge.

US cities sought to restore the rule

Baltimore, New Haven in Connecticut, Columbus in Ohio, and legal services provider Centro Legal de la Raza sought to intervene in the case to defend the regulation. The federal district court rejected their request.

The cities argued that they have substantial immigrant populations and that ending administrative closure could have wider consequences for their communities.

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They subsequently challenged the decision before the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which declined to suspend the agreement while the appeal proceeded.

The cities and the legal services group then approached the Supreme Court, arguing that the administration had used litigation with Texas to eliminate a federal regulation without following the required procedures for changing agency rules.

In a joint statement following the Supreme Court’s decision, the litigants and their lawyers from Democracy Forward expressed disappointment.

“Eliminating these protections puts vulnerable people at greater risk of deportation and undermines public safety in communities across the country,” they said.

What does the decision mean for immigrants?

The ruling does not itself decide the deportation cases of individual immigrants. However, it leaves the nationwide block on administrative closure in place while the broader legal dispute continues.

Immigration judges can no longer rely on the blocked Biden-era regulation as the basis for temporarily shelving cases under that framework.

For Indians living in the US who are involved in immigration proceedings, the development highlights the importance of understanding how changes to immigration court procedures may affect pending cases. The outcome of separate visa applications or appeals may still be relevant to an individual’s circumstances, but the availability of administrative closure under the blocked regulation has been removed.

The Supreme Court’s order addressed an emergency request and did not provide a detailed explanation of the decision. The wider legal challenge remains separate from the court’s refusal to suspend the agreement.