The Patriot Post® · SCOTUS Reinstates 'Remain in Mexico'

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Joe Biden’s ending of Donald Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), popularly knowns as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, failed to follow the proper procedures for terminating a policy. As a result, the Trump-era policy will be reinstated immediately, and asylum applicants will be forced to wait out their requests in Mexico.

The SCOTUS ruling upholds U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s nationwide injunction from earlier this month. Kacsmaryk ordered the Biden administration to “enforce and implement MPP in good faith until such a time as it has been lawfully rescinded in compliance with the [Administrative Procedure Act] and until such a time as the federal government has sufficient detention capacity to detain all aliens subject to mandatory detention under Section 1255 without releasing any aliens because of a lack of detention resources.”

The seesawing executive orders between the Obama and Trump and Biden administrations forced the Court to increasingly play the referee of the executive branch, which continues to assume the role of the legislative branch. Congress, not the executive branch, should be creating laws regarding immigration and asylum. It’s disappointing, however, that the Court often sidesteps the constitutionality of these executive orders, focusing instead on tackling the procedural arguments.

The seeming precedent being set is more SCOTUS refereeing over how the executive order can is kicked back and forth and less about whether executive orders are constitutional.

Meanwhile, south of the border, the Mexican government is suing American gun manufactures in a bid to hold them “accountable” for the “gun violence” meted out at the hands of the drug cartels. Talk about the classic blame game. Since the Mexican government has failed to prevent growing violence from criminal cartels via increasingly restrictive gun laws that prevent its citizens from protecting themselves against these armed thugs, it now wants to blame the gunmakers.

Three quick observations. First, if the Biden administration were committed to closing and controlling the southern border, then the flow of illegals, drugs, and guns would be significantly stymied, weakening the drug trade and the power of the cartels. Second, an armed citizenry is a bigger deterrent to criminals and their violence than is an unarmed citizenry that’s helpless to defend themselves. As studies repeatedly show, Americans use firearms to defend themselves between 500,000 and three million times annually. Third, the Mexican government is barking up the wrong tree. It’s not American gunmakers trafficking guns across the border; it was the Obama-Biden administration under Operation Fast and Furious.

With the Remain in Mexico policy reinstated, and Mexico’s ongoing violent crime issues, maybe some migrants thinking of illegally entering the U.S. and requesting asylum will have second thoughts — especially since they’d have to wait out their asylum requests south of the border.