U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement can continue using a Seattle airport for chartered deportation flights, a federal appeals court ruled in a decision that rejected a 2019 local order that sought to counter then-President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

The agency has long used airports around the country to charter flights deporting hundreds of thousands of noncitizens considered lawfully removable from the U.S.

But in 2019, in keeping with efforts in liberal Seattle and Washington state to resist Trump’s priorities, King County Executive Dow Constantine issued an executive order expressing concern that the deportations could constitute human rights abuses. It announced that future leases at the county airport, also known as Boeing Field, would bar operators from servicing deportation flights.

The order prompted ICE to begin using an airport in Yakima — a much farther drive from ICE’s Northwest detention center in Tacoma — for the deportation flights.The U.S. sued King County in 2020, arguing that Constantine’s order discriminated against the federal government by singling it and its contractors out for unfavorable treatment, and that it violated the terms of a World War II-era contract that guarantees the federal government’s right to use the airport.

U.S. District Judge Robert J. Bryan agreed, and Constantine issued a new executive order superseding his old one early last year. The new order, which was not challenged, does not purport to block deportation flights but instead prevents King County resources from aiding in the deportations beyond what federal law requires.

The new order also calls for transparency around any deportation flights. The airport now offers a conference room where the public can observe deportation flights on a video feed, and the county posts a log of deportation flights from the airport on its website.

The deportation flights resumed by May 2023, following Bryan’s decision and Constantine’s second executive order. In a ruling Friday, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld Bryan’s ruling.

“The Executive Order effectively grants King County the ‘power to control’ ICE’s transportation and deportation operations, forcing ICE either to stop using Boeing Field or to use government-owned planes there” — impermissibly overriding the federal government’s discretion, 9th Circuit Judge Daniel A. Bress wrote for the panel.

King County said it would not further appeal the case.

“The Ninth Circuit’s decision allows a raw assertion of federal power to overcome an expression of local values even absent any actual impact,” Amy Enbysk, a spokeswoman for the King County Executive’s Office, said in an emailed statement. “Although King County disagrees with the court’s decision, it will of course follow the court’s dictates.”

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A federal appeals court late Tuesday issued an order that again prevents Texas from arresting migrants suspected of entering the U.S. illegally, hours after the Supreme Court allowed the strict new immigration law to take effect.

The decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes weeks after a panel on the same court cleared the way for Texas to enforce the law by putting a pause on a lower judge’s injunction.

But by a 2-1 order, a panel of the appeals court lifted that pause ahead of arguments before the court on Wednesday.

Texas authorities had not announced any arrests made under the law. Earlier Tuesday a divided Supreme Court had allowed Texas to begin enforcing a law that gives police broad powers to arrest migrants suspected of crossing the border illegally as the legal battle over the measure played out.

The conservative majority order rejected an emergency application from the Biden administration, which says the law is a clear violation of federal authority that would cause chaos in immigration law.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had praised the order clearing the way for the law that allows any police officer in Texas to arrest migrants for illegal entry and authorizes judges to order them to leave the U.S.

The high court didn’t address whether the law is constitutional. The measure was sent to the appellate court, which made the late Tuesday ruling. It was also unclear where any migrants ordered to leave might go if the law is ultimately allowed. It calls for them to be sent to ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border, even if they are not Mexican citizens.

But Mexico’s government said Tuesday it would not “under any circumstances” accept the return of any migrants to its territory from the state of Texas. Mexico is not required to accept deportations of anyone except Mexican citizens.

The Supreme Court on Monday continued to block, for now, a Texas law that would give police broad powers to arrest migrants suspected of illegally entering the U.S. while the legal battle it sparked over immigration authority plays out.

A one-page order signed by Justice Samuel Alito indefinitely prevents Texas from enforcing a sweeping state immigration enforcement law that had been set to take effect this month. The language of the order strongly suggests the court will take additional action, but it is unclear when.

It marks the second time Alito has extended a pause on the law, known as Senate Bill 4, which the Justice Department has argued would step on the federal government’s immigration powers. Monday’s order extending the stay came a few minutes after a 5 p.m. deadline the court had set for itself, creating momentary confusion about the measure’s status.

Opponents have called the law the most dramatic attempt by a state to police immigration since an Arizona law more than a decade ago, portions of which were struck down by the Supreme Court. The court battle is unfolding as immigration emerges as a key issue in the 2024 presidential race.

The office of Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has said the state’s law mirrored federal law and “was adopted to address the ongoing crisis at the southern border, which hurts Texans more than anyone else.”

Arrests for illegal crossings along the southern border hit record highs in December but fell by half in January, a shift attributed to seasonal declines and heightened enforcement by the U.S. and its allies. The federal government has not yet released numbers for February.

The Biden administration sued to strike down the Texas measure in January, arguing it’s a clear violation of federal authority on immigration that would hurt international relations and create chaos in administering immigration law. Critics have also said the law could lead to civil rights violations and racial profiling.

A federal judge in Texas struck down the law in late February, but the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals quickly stayed that ruling, leading the federal government to appeal to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court in 2012 struck down key parts of an Arizona law that would have allowed police to arrest people for federal immigration violations, often referred to by opponents as the “show me your papers” bill. The divided high court found then that the impasse in Washington over immigration reform did not justify state intrusion.

The battle over the Texas immigration law is one of multiple legal disputes between Texas officials and the Biden administration over how far the state can go to patrol the Texas-Mexico border and prevent illegal border crossings.

Several Republican governors have backed Gov. Greg Abbott’s efforts, saying the federal government is not doing enough to enforce existing immigration laws.

A divided Supreme Court on Monday allowed Border Patrol agents to cut razor wire that Texas installed on the U.S.-Mexico border, while a lawsuit over the wire continues.

The justices, by a 5-4 vote, granted an emergency appeal from the Biden administration, which has been in an escalating standoff at the border with Texas and had objected to an appellate ruling in favor of the state.

The concertina wire along roughly 30 miles of the Rio Grande near the border city of Eagle Pass is part of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's broader fight with the administration over immigration enforcement.

Abbott has also authorized installing floating barriers in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass and allowed troopers to arrest and jail thousands of migrants on trespassing charges. The administration is also challenging those actions in federal court.

A federal appeals court last month forced federal agents to stop cutting the concertina wire. Large numbers of migrants have crossed at Eagle Pass in recent months.

In court papers, the administration said the wire impedes Border Patrol agents from reaching migrants as they cross the river and that, in any case, federal immigration law trumps Texas’ own efforts to stem the flow of migrants into the country.

Texas officials have argued that federal agents cut the wire to help groups crossing illegally through the river before taking them in for processing.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor sided with the administration. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas voted with Texas.

None of the justices provided an explanation for their vote.

Eight months after crossing the Rio Grande into the United States, a couple in their 20s sat in an immigration court in Miami with their three young children. Through an interpreter, they asked a judge to give them more time to find an attorney to file for asylum and not be deported back to Honduras, where gangs threatened them.

Judge Christina Martyak agreed to a three-month extension, referred Aarón Rodriguéz and Cindy Baneza to free legal aid provided by the Catholic Archdiocese of Miami in the same courthouse — and their case remains one of the unprecedented 3 million currently pending in immigration courts around the United States.

Fueled by record-breaking increases in migrants who seek asylum after being apprehended for crossing the border illegally, the court backlog has grown by more than 1 million over the last fiscal year and it’s now triple what it was in 2019, according to government data compiled by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

Judges, attorneys and migrant advocates worry that’s rendering an already strained system unworkable, as it often takes several years to grant asylum-seekers a new stable life and to deport those with no right to remain in the country.

“Sometimes hope already sinks,” said Mayra Cruz after her case was also granted an extension by Martyak because the Peruvian migrant doesn’t have an attorney.

“But here I’ve felt a bit safer,” added Cruz, who said she had to flee with only the clothes on her back with her partner and their children after repeated threats from gangs.

About 261,000 cases of migrants placed in removal proceedings are pending in the Miami court — the largest docket in the country. That’s about the same as were pending nationwide a dozen years ago, said Syracuse University professor Austin Kocher.

The backlog includes migrants who have been in the United States for decades and were apprehended on unrelated charges, but most are new asylum seekers who declare a fear of persecution if they are sent back, he added.

Backlogged courts, administered by the Justice Department, often get little attention in immigration debates, including in current Senate negotiations over the Biden administration’s $110 billion proposal that links aid for Ukraine and Israel to asylum and other border policy changes.

When migrants are apprehended by U.S. authorities at the border, many are released with a record of their detention and instructions to appear in court in the city where they are headed. That information is passed on from the Department of Homeland Security to the Justice Department, whose Executive Office for Immigration Review runs the courts, so that an initial hearing can be scheduled.

“They’re just being released without any idea of what comes next,” said Randy McGrorty, executive director of Catholic Legal Services for the Archdiocese of Miami, which has seen hundreds of thousands of migrants join its diaspora communities.

So many migrants go to them for advice that, in the last couple of years, they’ve largely switched to teaching how to self-petition and represent themselves before judges.

“We help them understand what judges want, and we help judges with efficiency and preserving fundamental rights,” said Miguel Mora, a Catholic Legal Services supervising attorney in Miami.

Advocates say that most migrants ask for individual legal representation, something that’s becoming increasingly rare given the huge numbers, and how to get work permits, which migrants can apply for 150 days after filing their asylum application.

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