Supreme Court Clears Path to Reopen 360,000 Closed Deportation Cases

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for the Trump administration to restrict a Biden-era policy that allowed immigration judges to close thousands of deportation cases each year. Roughly 360,000 migrants have had cases closed through the practice since 1990, and because those cases were never dismissed, they could now be reopened.

The decision leaves a Texas court's permanent injunction against the policy in place. It does not rule on whether the policy itself is lawful.

What is administrative closure?

The practice, called "administrative closure," lets immigration judges set aside cases without dismissing them. Judges have used some form of it for decades.

Immigration advocates say it eases the burden on backlogged immigration courts and spares migrants with strong claims to stay — such as crime victims or neglected children — from removal proceedings. Critics have called it backdoor amnesty.

The mechanism matters because a closed case is not a finished one. As The Washington Post noted, the shelved cases were never dismissed, so the government can pull them back onto dockets now that the policy is blocked.

In short, hundreds of thousands of migrants whose cases were parked may now face removal proceedings again.

How did the rule get here?

The policy traveled a winding path before reaching the Supreme Court:

• The first Trump administration moved to ban the practice.
• The Biden administration wrote it into regulation in 2024.
• After Trump returned to office, his administration dropped its defense of that rule.
• Texas sued over the rule in a Texas federal court; the Justice Department sided with the state.
• The judge issued a permanent injunction blocking the policy.

So the rule's fate was sealed largely outside the Supreme Court. The administration simply stopped defending it, and a friendly court did the rest.

The practical takeaway: a policy that survived one Trump term fell quickly once its own government stopped fighting for it.

Who tried to save the rule?

Three cities with large immigrant populations — Baltimore, Columbus, Ohio, and New Haven, Connecticut — joined an immigrant rights group in trying to step in and defend the rule.

Lower courts refused to let them intervene. They appealed to the Supreme Court, asking to be heard as defenders of the regulation.

The justices turned the appeal away in an unsigned opinion, without explaining their reasoning. The order leaves the Texas injunction standing and the policy blocked nationwide.

The result: cities most affected by immigration enforcement could not get a seat at the table to defend a federal rule their residents relied on.

What happens next?

The Supreme Court's order settles only the question of intervention, not the legality of administrative closure itself. The Texas injunction remains the governing law for now.

For the roughly 360,000 migrants whose cases were administratively closed since 1990, the practical risk is reopening. Cases set aside without dismissal can return to active dockets.

Anyone with a closed immigration case should track announcements from the Executive Office for Immigration Review and the Department of Justice, the official sources for court procedure changes.

The bottom line: Tuesday's order does not end administrative closure as a legal question, but it removes the last obstacle to blocking it in practice.