Supreme Court to hear Trump immigration cases on border wall, asylum

The Supreme Court announced Monday it will take up two key cases involving President Trump’s get-tough immigration policy, granting hearings on his border wall construction project and his crackdown on bogus asylum claims.

The asylum policy, officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols and more commonly called the “Remain in Mexico” policy, makes people who show up at the border from Central America and further afield return to Mexico to wait while their cases proceed in the U.S.

That eliminated the incentive to make bogus asylum claims, because it denied migrants the chance to live in the U.S. while their cases were pending. MPP, along with new deals struck between the U.S. and Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala solved last year’s record family migrant surge.

But lower courts have ruled that the policy, announced by Homeland Security, exceeds the powers Congress granted to the president.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is helping with the challenge, called MPP “illegal and depraved.”

“The courts have repeatedly ruled against it, and the Supreme Court should as well,” said ACLU lawyer Judy Rabinovitz.

The wall case, meanwhile, involves the president’s emergency border declaration and his shift of billions of dollars from Pentagon accounts to wall-building.

Lower courts have ruled his siphoning of money illegal, but the high court has allowed him to continue construction while the cases wind their way through the courts.