The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered the extension of border laws which were due to expire on 21 December.
The border laws, referred to as ‘Title 42’, gave the government the power to automatically expel migrants seeking entry to the U.S.
They were implemented by former President Donald Trump as a COVID emergency measure.
Background
Millions of asylum seekers have been expelled under the law.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, the policy has been applied more than 2.4 million times.
While the Trump administration introduced the law, the Biden administration kept it in place for more than a year, before announcing an intention to repeal it. That was blocked by a Republican-led legal challenge.
The daily number of border crossings has surpassed 9,000 multiple times this month, according to Axios.
Court decision
The Supreme Court’s decision was a temporary one. The Court will hear the case in full in February and make a longer-term decision then.
The result was 5-4. Dissenting Justices Neil Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson argued the policy should have been suspended because “the emergency on which those orders were premised has long since lapsed.”
