Three Out-of-State Cities Ask Supreme Court to Undo Texas Win on Immigration Courts

Baltimore, Columbus and New Haven have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to suspend a Texas court judgment that struck down a federal rule letting immigration judges set deportation cases aside. Justice Samuel Alito, who handles emergency applications from the Fifth Circuit, has ordered a response by 4 p.m. Eastern on October 22.

The three cities filed the application on October 9 with Centro Legal de la Raza, an Oakland, California, legal-services nonprofit. A Washington-based legal organization represents them. They call the judgment the product of “egregious collusion” between Texas and the U.S. Department of Justice.

What Texas won

The rule, adopted by the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review in May 2024, allowed immigration judges to “administratively close” a case, taking it off the active docket without deciding it. Texas sued in the Wichita Falls Division of the Northern District of Texas in June. The state told the court that ending the rule would “necessarily reduce the number of cases administratively closed and, therefore, reduce the number of illegal aliens permitted to remain indefinitely in the United States.”

The Justice Department did not fight the case. Months earlier, after the change in administration, the immigration office’s acting director had written that the office “could not” defend the rule in good faith and “will not” try. Within hours of the filing, Texas and the department jointly asked for a consent judgment, according to the application. Chief U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor entered it on June 22, 2026, the same day Texas filed suit. His order declares that “no statute authorizes immigration judges to indefinitely administratively close or suspend adjudication of a case before them,” vacates the rule and permanently bars the department from issuing a similar one without an express basis in law.

The challenge

The cities tried to join the case to appeal. They argued that if Texas is right that more people will be deported, some of their own taxpayers will be among them, and that the change will make crime victims less willing to work with their police. O’Connor ruled on August 21 that none of them had standing to sue and refused to let them in. He refused to pause his judgment on September 2, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit refused on September 29.

Their application now asks the justices to put the judgment on hold, which would restore the rule while their appeal proceeds. It argues that a federal agency should not be able to repeal a regulation by declining to defend it in court instead of going through public rulemaking.

Texas brought the case in a Texas courtroom and won it there. Three cities in Maryland, Ohio and Connecticut are now asking Washington’s highest court to put the rule back on the books.