US Supreme Court freezes removal of policy blocking migrants

The US Supreme Court halted the imminent scrapping of a key policy used since Donald Trump's administration to block migrants at the southwest border, amid worries over a surge in undocumented immigrants.

An order signed by Chief Justice John Roberts placed an emergency stay on the removal planned of Title 42, which allowed the government to use Covid-19 safety protocols to summarily block the entry of millions of migrants.

Roberts placed government immigration policy on temporary hold in response to a last-minute petition from 20 states arguing that ending Title 42 would create a gush in migrants that would overwhelm their services.

They cited the Department of Homeland Security predicting that border crossings, mostly by Mexicans and other Latin Americans asking for asylum, could triple to 18,000 every day.

"The greatly increased number of migrants resulting from this termination will necessarily increase the States' law enforcement, education, and healthcare costs," the states argued.

The move came after an appeals court in Washington ruled that there was no longer justification for using Title 42 to sweepingly reject asylum-seekers.

The policy was put in place in March 2020, in Trump's final year in office, as the coronavirus pandemic swept into the United States.

The administration of President Joe Biden had previously accepted a lower court ruling that Title 42 was no longer justified to block asylum seekers and other migrants.