Expert: Pending Supreme Court Immigration Cases Stem from Obama Administration

John Fritze, USA Today, Mar. 12, 2021

"Less than two months after President Donald Trump left office immigration has fizzled as an issue at the Supreme Court, with major disputes that became conservative rallying cries largely vanishing from the court's docket. After four years in which Trump placed immigration at the center of his domestic agenda, prompting dozens of legal battles, the cases now pending at the nation's highest court are more likely to have started under former President Barack Obama and to involve technical matters rather than big picture policy questions. But immigration experts predict the lull won't last as President Joe Biden comes under immense pressure from the left to quickly unwind many of Trump's policies and Republicans line up to try to block the administration's earliest orders. Two such cases are already moving through lower federal courts in Florida and Texas. ... Pending immigration cases stemming from the Obama administration are in part a function of the years it takes for disputes to work their way through the courts. But it also underscores that many of the technical aspects of immigration enforcement don't change much from president to president – despite the rhetoric from both parties. "People may think, 'Oh, well, now the government is always going to be trying to find ways to help immigrants' and that's not the case," said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a Cornell Law School professor who specializes in immigration. "You see that in some of these cases...where the government is still appealing to the Supreme Court on these technical but important issues." "