The Courts Cannot Keep Running America’s Immigration System
WASHINGTON — Third Way released the following statement from Sarah Pierce, Director of Social Policy, after the Supreme Court issued two major immigration decisions in Mullin v. Doe/Trump v. Miot and Mullin v. Al Otro Lado:
“Today, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority handed down two decisions that will reshape the state and function of immigration in the United States. In Mullin v. Doe, the Court cleared the way for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians to lose their legal status and work authorization. In Mullin v. Al Otro Lado the Court found that the federal government may turn back asylum seekers back at the ports of entry.
These cases involve hard truths about both the past failures and future challenges of our immigration system. It is not ideal for hundreds of thousands of people to live indefinitely on temporary status. But it is also deeply irresponsible to suddenly rip that status away from people who have lived, worked, paid taxes, and built families here legally, with no plan for the consequences to their families, communities, employers, or the country. And while administrations need tools to manage the pace and order of asylum processing until Congress properly resources the border and reforms our laws, court rulings are no way to fix our border problems.
Both of these legal fights are symptoms of a broken system. For too long, our immigration policy has been made through lawsuits, emergency orders, temporary protections, and agency improvisation. That is no way to run an immigration policy in any country, and certainly not in this one.
The courts cannot fix our immigration system. Congress needs to create a durable system that meets our modern realities, including the serious challenges facing both our border and our economy. We need security, order, and a flexible legal immigration system that can respond to our country’s changing needs. Permanent tools help end the current downward cycle in which every administration is forced to improvise through executive action, only to see each action immediately challenged in court. Americans deserve an immigration system built to last—not one run by whiplash litigation and crisis.”