Central American asylum seekers are detained by the US Border Patrol after they crossed into the United States from Mexico on April 29, 2021 near Yuma, Arizona. (Getty images)

A US appeals court has ruled against a renewed effort by President Joe Biden’s administration to terminate the Trump-era remain in Mexico policy, which forced tens of thousands of migrants to stay in Mexico while their asylum requests were processed by US courts.

Biden suspended his Republican predecessor’s controversial policy, officially called the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), soon after taking office in January this year. In June, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas signed a memo terminating the program, calling it ineffective.

Republican officials in Texas and Missouri sued the administration over the termination and a federal judge ruled the policy had to be reinstated. The administration asked the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court to suspend District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s ruling - but its requests were denied.

Upholding the ruling from Kacsmaryk, a three-judge panel from the 5th Circuit said on Monday the Biden administration’s decision to scrap the policy violated legal administrative procedures and federal immigration law.

The Supreme Court had previously denied a request from the administration for the program to remain suspended while the case was appealed.

Biden had denounced the policy on the campaign trail and vowed to repeal it. Immigration advocates have said migrants stuck in squalid camps in crime-ridden border towns have faced kidnappings and other dangers.

The administration, however, relaunched the policy last week, sending the first asylum seekers back to Mexico.

Since the program was reinstated, 86 migrants have been returned to Mexico, according to the International Organization for Migration.

The Biden administration contends that the federal government has discretion over whether to detain migrants or release them on parole in the United States while their asylum claims are processed.

The 5th Circuit said Congress had restricted the federal government’s ability to release migrants on a case-by-case basis. Deciding to parole aliens en masse is the opposite of case-by-case decision-making, it explained.

The conservative-leaning court said the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claims the power to implement a massive policy reversal - affecting billions of dollars and countless people - simply by typing out a new Word document and posting it on the internet. No input from Congress, no ordinary rulemaking procedures, and no judicial review.

The DHS has come nowhere close to shouldering its heavy burden to show that it can make law in a vacuum, the judges wrote in their 117-page opinion.

So far, the implementation of the policy has been limited to El Paso, Texas, but the DHS said it was looking to expand the program to cover the entire US-Mexico border.

Congressional Republicans have sounded the alarm over the record numbers of migrants who have been arrested this year trying to cross the southern border into the United States.

Many migrants detained at the border, however, are quickly sent back without being given a chance to even seek asylum under a different Trump-era policy introduced at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

President Biden had decried that policy too but ultimately kept it in place.