Trump Administration and Texas Ask Supreme Court to Uphold Deal That Killed Rule Letting Immigration Judges Pause Deportations

The Trump administration and Texas urged the Supreme Court on Thursday, Oct. 22, to leave in place their agreement that abolished a Biden-era rule allowing immigration judges to suspend some deportation proceedings, according to the court's docket and SCOTUSblog.

The filings answer an emergency request from three cities, led by Baltimore and joined by New Haven, Conn., and Columbus, Ohio, along with Centro Legal de la Raza, a group that provides legal services to immigrants. The challengers want the justices to pause a Texas federal judge's ruling while they appeal. Justice Samuel Alito had asked for responses by 4 p.m. Thursday, the docket shows.

What the Rule for Immigration Judges Did

The Executive Office for Immigration Review, part of the Justice Department, adopted the rule in 2024. Known as "administrative closure," it lets immigration judges suspend deportation proceedings in some situations, for example when a crime victim or witness is seeking immigration relief such as asylum, SCOTUSblog reported.

Texas sued in June in federal court in Wichita Falls, arguing the immigration office had no power to adopt the rule. On the same day, the Justice Department and Texas jointly asked Chief U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor to enter a final judgment for the state, throw out the rule and bar a similar rule in the future, and O'Connor granted those requests, according to SCOTUSblog.

O'Connor later denied the cities' bid to join the case to defend the rule, finding they lacked standing, and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to pause his decision. The challengers went to the Supreme Court on Oct. 9, the docket shows.

What Each Side Told the Justices

In their application, the challengers called the consent judgment "indefensible," arguing that if a judgment "procured through such open collusion is allowed to remain in effect," any agency could escape federal rules by declining to defend a regulation it dislikes, according to SCOTUSblog.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices the challengers were trying to "improperly leverage a clear-cut dispute over" whether they could join the case "into a far-reaching attack on the merits" of the agreement, SCOTUSblog reported. Sauer noted that the agreement does not require cases already administratively closed to be put back on an immigration judge's calendar.

Texas argued that granting the request "would revive a rule the district court declared unlawful, renew the fiscal and sovereign injuries Texas alleged, and unsettle a final judgment accepted by the actual parties." The state added that if any local government could sue whenever immigration policy might change its number of taxpayers, "nearly every immigration measure would be judicially challengeable by municipalities on both sides," according to SCOTUSblog.

The justices have not yet acted on the request.

Image: United States Post Office and Courthouse, Wichita Falls, Texas (file photo), by Michael Barera, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Hold Everyone Accountable.

Sources: SCOTUSblog, "Trump administration and Texas urge court to leave their agreement on deportation proceedings in place" (Oct. 22, 2026): https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/10/trump-administration-and-texas-urge-court-to-leave-their-agreement-on-deportation-proceedings-in/ ; Supreme Court of the United States, docket No. 26A500, City of Baltimore, Maryland, et al. v. Texas, et al.: https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/26a500.html