Three Democratic cities asked the Supreme Court to revive a Biden-era immigration rule that Texas and the Trump Justice Department halted in a deal the cities call collusion.
Baltimore, Columbus, Ohio, and New Haven, Conn., along with legal aid group Centro Legal de la Raza, said Friday they filed an emergency application at the high court. They want to restore a Biden administration regulation on “administrative closure,” a practice that lets immigration judges pull certain cases off their calendars and leave them paused.
The Hill reported that Texas sued over the rule in June, and the Trump administration the same day conceded it was unlawful. A judge then entered an order stopping the regulation’s implementation nationwide. Lower courts later refused to let the cities and the legal aid group step into the case to defend it.
The cities frame that sequence as a setup. In their filing they accuse Texas and the administration of working hand in glove to kill a regulation the new Justice Department did not want to keep.
In the emergency application, the cities wrote:
"This case involves an egregious new extension of this phenomenon,"
They went further:
"The government did not merely leverage a convenient loss to undo agency action, but rather, announced in advance that it would not defend a disfavored regulation and then colluded with the challenger from the moment that suit was filed."
Texas challenged the Biden-era regulation in June. The state’s suit said the rule “drastically expands” administrative closure. The Justice Department did not fight to keep the regulation. It agreed the rule was unlawful, and a judge quickly ordered a nationwide stop on putting it into effect.
Administrative closure is not brand new. Versions of the practice have existed for years. The fight is over how far the Biden regulation pushed it, and whether immigration judges should be free to park cases for very long stretches of time.
The cities say the tool matters for neglected juveniles who need time to seek relief. The Justice Department has taken the opposite view of indefinite pauses. In a filing to a lower court, the department wrote:
"But allowing immigration judges to exercise discretion by pausing a case indefinitely, often for decades, if not forever, would subvert Congress’s directive,"
That is the core policy clash. One side wants wide discretion to freeze cases. The other side says open-ended freezes gut the system Congress designed. The same enforcement posture has shown up in other recent federal moves, including when the DOJ forced states to drop in-state tuition breaks for illegal immigrants.
After the nationwide halt, the three cities and Centro Legal de la Raza tried to intervene. They wanted to defend the regulation themselves once the federal government stopped doing so. Lower courts turned them away.
Their Supreme Court filing stresses that real adversity between the parties is required for a proper case. They argue the Texas-DOJ alignment erased that adversity on purpose.
The application states:
"The adversity requirement is not a formality,"
Democracy Forward Foundation represents the cities and the legal aid group. The organization has filed dozens of lawsuits against the Trump administration. The emergency request lands with Justice Samuel Alito, who by default handles emergency matters arising from Texas. He can act alone or send the dispute to the full court for a vote.
Federal immigration enforcement has been moving on several tracks at once. The Supreme Court has already stepped into related fights, including when it restored Trump administration power to remove illegal immigrants from voter rolls.
In plain terms, administrative closure lets an immigration judge take a case off the active calendar. The case does not end with a final order. It sits. Supporters call that a practical way to manage crowded dockets and give vulnerable people time. Critics call it a path to endless delay.
The Justice Department’s line is blunt: pauses that last “often for decades, if not forever” undercut what Congress told the system to do. Texas said the Biden rule dramatically widened the practice. The administration accepted that the regulation could not stand, and the resulting court order stopped it across the country.
The cities want that order undone and the regulation revived. They cast the Texas suit and the government’s same-day concession as coordinated lawfare rather than a lawful decision to stop defending a rule the executive branch now views as illegal. That dispute sits against a wider enforcement backdrop that also includes DOJ charges over alleged illegal voting and election crimes in multiple states.
Baltimore, Columbus, and New Haven are Democratic-controlled. Their filing, joined by Centro Legal de la Raza, treats the blocked regulation as worth saving at the highest court. They lost at the intervention stage below and are now asking the justices for emergency relief.
No docket number, formal case caption, or full regulatory citation appears in the public account of the application. The documented timeline is still clear enough on the main beats: Texas sued in June; the administration conceded the same day; a judge halted the rule nationwide; lower courts denied intervention; the cities and the legal aid group then went to the Supreme Court.
Separate Justice Department actions have kept pressure on related fronts, from records demands in election probes to removal cases. One recent example is the first-ever case filed in the Alien Terrorist Removal Court tied to an Election Day plot. Another is the department’s push for voter records from state officials, including when it issued subpoenas in Nevada seeking election records.
Those matters are distinct from the administrative-closure fight. They show the same administration using the courts and federal statutes to tighten immigration and election integrity rules that prior policy left loose.
The cities want the Supreme Court to treat the Texas-DOJ resolution as illegitimate collusion and to put the Biden regulation back in force. The record they are attacking shows something more basic: a state challenged a rule, the federal government agreed the rule was unlawful, and a judge entered a nationwide halt. When outside parties tried to keep defending the regulation anyway, lower courts said no.
Indefinite pauses may sound humane in a press release. In practice they can mean cases that never reach a decision, backlogs that never clear, and a statute that Congress wrote for removals and relief turned into a waiting room without an exit. The Justice Department told a lower court that outcome would subvert Congress’s directive. Texas said the Biden rule drastically expanded the tool. The administration stopped defending it.
Emergency applications move fast, and Alito can resolve this one or share it with the full Court. Either way, the policy question does not vanish. It is whether immigration judges get a green light to park cases for years or decades, or whether the executive branch may pull back a regulation it has concluded goes too far.
Open-ended case freezes are not compassion. They are delay with a softer name, and voters elected an administration that stopped pretending otherwise.
