Administrative Closure: DOJ, Texas Oppose Supreme Court Stay

Hundreds of thousands of people have deportation cases that are open but on hold, some of them for nearly two decades. Their cases were set aside through a tool called administrative closure. A legal fight over that tool has now reached the Supreme Court, and the government’s latest filings answer a question many of those people are asking: does the court fight put their cases back in motion?

What is administrative closure?

When the government wants to deport someone, the case goes before an immigration judge, and appeals go to the Board of Immigration Appeals. Normally a case moves toward a decision: the person either wins the right to stay or is ordered removed.

Administrative closure is a way to pause a case without deciding it. The judge or the Board takes the case off the active calendar, so there are no more hearings or deadlines. The case is not dismissed, and the person does not gain legal status. It simply sits. Either side can later ask to put it back on the calendar, which is called recalendaring.

Judges have often used closure when the person is waiting on a separate application that could resolve the case, such as a U visa for crime victims, which is handled by a different agency and can take years. Closure lets the judge set the case aside rather than push it to a deportation order while that application is pending. It also frees space on crowded court calendars.

The tool has been politically contested. It was sharply limited in 2018, restored in 2021, and in 2024 written into a formal regulation that spelled out judges’ power to use it. Administrative closure grants no legal status or work permit; whether someone can work legally depends on a separate application, such as a U visa or asylum claim, that may itself take years

How the 2024 rule was erased

On June 22, 2026, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and America First Legal sued the Justice Department over the 2024 administrative closure rule. They filed in the Wichita Falls Division of the federal district court for the Northern District of Texas. The Justice Department did not defend the rule. That same day, the two sides asked the court to enter a consent judgment, and Chief Judge Reed O’Connor signed it within hours, striking down the rule and barring the department from enforcing it. Baltimore, Columbus, New Haven and the legal aid group Centro Legal de la Raza were not parties to the case. They asked O’Connor to let them join it so they could defend the rule, and he refused. He also refused to put his judgment on hold while they appealed. The cities then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, where the case is still pending. After the Fifth Circuit also declined to pause the judgment, they filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court on Oct. 9. That application does not ask the justices to decide the whole dispute. It asks them to suspend the judgment and revive the rule while the appeal continues. It went first to Justice Samuel Alito, who handles emergency matters from the Fifth Circuit.

What the government and Texas argue

Solicitor General D. John Sauer’s brief says the cities lack standing, meaning they have not shown they are harmed enough to bring the challenge. The cities’ theory is that paused cases will be recalendared, leading to deportations, which cost the cities income tax revenue. Sauer calls that chain of events “highly attenuated.” Texas, joined by America First Legal, argues there is no appeals court ruling for the Supreme Court to review yet, and that outsiders to the case should not be allowed to disturb a final judgment.

What the briefs concede about closed cases

For people whose cases are already paused, the most important passages are statements of fact. The government says the judgment works only going forward: judges can no longer close new cases, but cases already closed do not have to be reopened. It says the cities have not pointed to a single closed case that was put back on the calendar, or a single deportation order that resulted, in the four months since the judgment. And it says it would not oppose speeding up the appeal pending in the Fifth Circuit.

The government made those statements to show the cities face no urgent harm. But they also place on the Supreme Court record the government’s own description of the judgment’s limits, which people with closed cases may be able to point to if DHS, the agency that prosecutes deportation cases, tries to reopen their files.

How many cases are paused

The Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency that runs the immigration courts, publishes a count of administratively closed cases. Its July 2026 statistics label them “Amnesty Cases,” though closure grants no legal status. The number has been falling.

End of period	Administratively closed cases
FY 2024	389,076
FY 2025	338,287
FY 2026, third quarter	309,677

Source: EOIR Adjudication Statistics, “Amnesty Cases,” data generated July 24, 2026. Counts include immigration courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals.

That is a drop of 79,399 cases, about 20 percent, from the end of fiscal 2024 to June 2026, based on the EOIR figures. The same data show these cases have been closed for an average of 6,929 days, about 19 years, with a median of 5,111 days, about 14 years. Most of the decline came before the June judgment. The data do not explain why. The period does overlap with the Board’s February 2026 decision in Matter of Ibarra-Vega, which limited judges’ ability to close U visa cases when DHS objects.

The two sides see the same numbers differently. For Texas, more than 300,000 cases left untouched for years is the problem. For the cities, those files include crime victims waiting on U visas, a group the Board has also made it harder to protect in another way: in Matter of L. Ramirez, it dropped a presumption that had favored postponing their hearings.

Where the case is likely to go

Justice Alito can decide the application himself or refer it to the full Court. To win a stay, the cities must show a reasonable chance the Court would take up the case and a fair chance it would rule in their favor, and they have not yet won the standing question in any court. The likelier outcome is a denial that sends the dispute back to the Fifth Circuit, possibly on a faster schedule.

The broader question, whether an administration can eliminate a regulation by agreeing to a court judgment against it, may come up again in other cases. The government’s brief points to its pending petition on universal vacatur, the remedy of striking down a rule for everyone, in HHS v. Texas Medical Ass’n, No. 26-491. It also says affected immigrants may be able to challenge the judgment later. Any case that does come off the closed list will join an active docket that is already measured in millions of cases.

Questions people in closed cases are asking

My removal case was administratively closed years ago. Does the Texas judgment reopen it?

Not by itself. The government told the Supreme Court the judgment applies to new closures and does not require reopening cases already closed. But DHS can still ask a judge to recalendar an individual case, so a closed case is paused, not protected.

Without administrative closure, can an immigration judge still pause my case while my U visa is pending?

Mainly through a continuance, which postpones a hearing to a later date and is now harder to get. Under Matter of L. Ramirez, judges weigh the good-cause factors from Matter of L-A-B-R-, and a visa decision that is likely far off counts against the request. The government’s brief also mentions two other routes, DHS motions to dismiss and the EOIR director’s authority to defer cases, but both depend on the government agreeing.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds a LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Deigo and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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