FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will issue an order this week about how migrant children are treated under a public health order that has prevented people from seeking asylum at the nation’s borders, a Justice Department attorney said Tuesday.

The comment by Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Stoltz at a court hearing in Fort Worth, Texas, comes as the Biden administration faces pressure from pro-immigration allies to lift the last major Trump-era restrictions on asylum at the border.

Stoltz told a federal judge that the CDC will release “a new order on the subject of the children” by the end of the week. It will revise a Biden administration policy announced in February that exempts children crossing alone from the ban on asylum.

Stoltz did not offer additional details on the changes during a hearing on a lawsuit that Texas brought to compel enforcement of the public health order that former President Donald Trump’s administration used to quickly expel people from the country during the coronavirus pandemic.

The government attorney said the CDC order this week will largely render Texas’ arguments moot. He did not elaborate, and CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said the agency had “nothing more to add right now.”

The CDC, in a three-paragraph order signed by its director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, on Feb. 11, exempted unaccompanied children from being expelled to Mexico until “a forthcoming public health reassessment,” which has yet to be published. Texas argues in its lawsuit that the administration’s justification was insufficient.

Higher COVID-19 vaccination rates have brought increasing pressure on the Biden administration to lift the public health order that was always intended as a temporary measure during the pandemic. While the administration has exempted unaccompanied children, some families and nearly all adults traveling alone are expelled from the United States — often to Mexico within two hours — without a chance to seek asylum.

The Associated Press reported last year that then-Vice President Mike Pence directed the CDC to use emergency powers to effectively seal America’s borders, overruling agency scientists who said there was no evidence the action would slow COVID-19.

Lifting the ban could encourage more people to come to the border to seek asylum at a time when the U.S. is under mounting strain. The U.N. refugee agency reported last month that the U.S. was once again the top destination for asylum-seekers in 2020, with about 250,000 new claims filed, more than twice as high as second-place Germany.

Texas, which has the busiest corridor for illegal border crossings, is seeking a court order forcing the federal government to cease what state Deputy Attorney General Aaron Reitz called “de facto non-enforcement” of the asylum ban. Reitz argued that the Biden administration’s posture “threatens the health and safety of all Texans.”

U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, a Trump appointee, questioned Stoltz about the timing of the new order and asked that the government inform him as soon as it is issued. Pittman did not rule on the request for an injunction but said he will put out a decision “as quickly as I can.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to a showdown over abortion in a case that could dramatically alter nearly 50 years of rulings on abortion rights.

With three justices appointed by President Donald Trump part of a 6-3 conservative majority, the court is taking on a case about whether states can ban abortions before a fetus can survive outside the womb.

Mississippi, which is asking to be allowed to enforce an abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy, is not asking the court to overrule the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision confirming a woman’s right to an abortion, or a decision 19 years later that reaffirmed it.

But abortion rights supporters said the case is a clear threat to abortion rights. “The court cannot uphold this law without overturning the principal protections of Roe v. Wade,” Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a call with reporters.

Even if the court does not explicitly overrule earlier cases, a decision favorable to the state could lay the groundwork for allowing even more restrictions on abortion, including state bans on abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, as early as six weeks.

The case probably will be argued in the fall, with a decision likely in the spring of 2022 during the campaign for congressional midterm elections.

Mississippi’s ban had been blocked by lower courts as inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent that protects a woman’s right to obtain an abortion before the fetus can survive outside her womb.

“States may regulate abortion procedures prior to viability so long as they do not impose an undue burden on the woman’s right, but they may not ban abortions. The law at issue is a ban,” Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in affirming a lower-court ruling that invalidated the law.

The Supreme Court had previously turned down state appeals over previability abortion bans.

More than 90% of abortions take place in the first 13 weeks of a woman’s pregnancy, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

John Bursch, vice president of the anti-abortion Alliance Defending Freedom, said the high court has repeatedly held that states can regulate abortions later in pregnancy.

Viability “has never been a legitimate way to determine a developing infant’s dignity or to decide anybody’s legal existence,” Bursch said.

The justices had put off action on the case for several months. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an abortion rights proponent, died just before the court’s new term began in October. Her replacement, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, is the most open opponent of abortion rights to join the court in decades.

Barrett is one of three Trump appointees on the Supreme Court. The other two, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, voted in dissent last year to allow Louisiana to enforce restrictions on doctors that could have closed two of the state’s three abortion clinics.

Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by Ginsburg and the other three liberal justices, said the restrictions were virtually identical to a Texas law the court struck down in 2016.

But that majority no longer exists, even if Roberts, hardly an abortion rights supporter in his more than 15 years on the court, sides with the more liberal justices.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the Biden administration backs legislation that would write the Roe decision into federal law, regardless of the outcome of the Supreme Court case. The legislation would put an end to state efforts to ban abortion, Northup said.

The Mississippi law was enacted in 2018, but was blocked after a federal court challenge. The state’s only abortion clinic remains open. About 10% of its abortions are done after the 15th week, said Shannon Brewer, the clinic director at Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

The case is separate from a fight over laws enacted by Mississippi and other states that would ban most abortions when a fetal heartbeat is detected. Mississippi also is among 11 states with a total abortion ban waiting to take effect if the Supreme Court overturns its Roe decision, according to NARAL Pro-Choice America.

A central question in the case is about viability — whether a fetus can survive on its own at 15 weeks. The clinic presented evidence that viability is impossible at 15 weeks, and the appeals court said that the state “conceded that it had identified no medical evidence that a fetus would be viable at 15 weeks.” Viability occurs roughly at 24 weeks, the point at which babies are more likely to survive.

But the state argues that viability is an arbitrary standard that doesn’t take sufficient account of the state’s interest in regulating abortion.

The Mississippi law would allow exceptions to the 15-week ban in cases of medical emergency or severe fetal abnormality. Doctors found in violation of the ban would face mandatory suspension or revocation of their medical license.

Also on Monday the Supreme Court:

— Split 6-3 along conservative-liberal lines to rule that prisoners who were convicted by non-unanimous juries before the high court barred the practice a year ago don’t need to be retried. The decision affects prisoners who were convicted in Louisiana and Oregon as well as the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, the few places that had allowed criminal convictions based on divided jury votes.

— Sided unanimously with a man who sued after police entered his home without a warrant and seized his guns. Police said that the man was potentially suicidal and that they were performing a “community caretaking” function. The justices said authorities can’t use that justification to enter a home without a warrant.

— Ruled 7-1 that an appeals court should take another look at a lawsuit involving global warming that is in its early stages. Lawyers have been arguing over whether the case belongs in state or federal court.

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The number of migrants being stopped at the U.S.-Mexico border has been rising steadily since last April, and the administration is still rapidly expelling most single adults and families under a public health order issued by President Donald Trump at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But it is allowing teens and children to stay, at least temporarily, and they have been coming in ever larger numbers. More than 4,000 migrant children were being held by the Border Patrol custody as of Sunday, including at least 3,000 in custody longer than the 72-hour limit set by a court order, according to a U.S. official. The agency took in an additional 561 on Monday, twice the recent average, according to a second official. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss figures not yet publicly released.

It has put President Joe Biden in a difficult spot, blasted by Republicans for what they view as encouragement to illegal border crossers and by some Democrats over the the prolonged detention of minors. It’s also a challenge to his effort to overhaul the broader Trump policies that sought to curtail both legal and illegal immigration. “The situation at the southwest border is difficult,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas conceded Tuesday in his most extensive remarks to date on the subject. “We are working around the clock to manage it and we, will continue to do so. That is our job.” The number of migrants attempting to cross the border is at the highest level since March 2019, with Mayorkas warning that it is on pace to hit a 20-year peak for the year. The number of children crossing by themselves, mostly from Central America, appears to be surging in particular in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. The Border Patrol took in 280 there alone on Monday.

The total of 561 unaccompanied minors from Monday offers a snapshot of how quickly conditions have changed along the border. That was up 60% from the daily average in February, one of the officials said. In May 2019, during the last surge, the one-day peak was 370 teens and children. Children and teens crossing by themselves rose 60% from this January to more than 9,400 in February, according to the most recent statistics released publicly by U.S.

Customs and Border Protection. The Health and Human Services Department plans to open shelter facilities at Moffett Federal Airfield near San Francisco and in Pecos, Texas, to handle the flow. It is also looking to expand a facility in Donna, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, to hold 2,000. Also, the Dallas Convention Center is scheduled to begin holding children as early as Wednesday with plans to accommodate up to 3,000.

Another makeshift holding center in Midland, Texas, that opened last weekend for 700 children had 485 on Monday. Some of the increase in adults is due to people who are repeatedly caught after being expelled under the public health order issued last year to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. Other factors include economic upheaval caused by the pandemic and recent hurricanes that worsened living conditions in Central America. Officials say it’s also likely that smugglers have encouraged people to try to cross under the new administration.

Mayorkas said the a surge in the number of children is a challenge for the Border Patrol and other agencies amid the coronavirus pandemic. But he rejected a Trump-era policy of sending them immediately back to Mexico or other countries. “They are vulnerable children and we have ended the prior administration’s practice of expelling them,” Mayorkas said. Though there have been previous migrant surges, including under Trump, Republicans in Congress say that Biden’s support for new immigration legislation and his decision to allow people to make legal asylum claims have become a magnet for migrants. At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, Sen.

Jim Inhofe held up a photo of a small crowd of demonstrators in Tijuana, Mexico, wearing matching T-shirts with the words “Biden, Please Let us in” that circulated widely on social media in recent days. “They’re all coming across the border, they’re coming fast, and they’re wearing Biden T-shirts,” said the Oklahoma Republican. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy led a delegation of a dozen Republican lawmakers on Monday to the border in Texas and blamed the Biden administration for driving an increase in migrants by actions that include supporting legislation in Congress that would provide a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented people now in the country and halting border wall construction. “The sad part about all of this is it didn’t have to happen. This crisis was created by the presidential policies of this new administration,” McCarthy said.

Biden pushed back in an interview Tuesday with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, noting previous surges under Trump and pointing out that his administration has been trying to discourage people from crossing while it works to restore an asylum system undermined by his predecessor. “I heard the other day that they’re coming because they know I’m a nice guy. Yeah, well here’s the deal. They’re not.” Trump did, in fact, confront a similar surge in 2019 even as he rushed to expand the border wall system along the border and forced people seeking asylum to do so in Central America or remain in Mexico.

A year earlier he forcibly separated migrant children from their families as part of a zero-tolerance campaign that became one of the most significant political challenges of his administration. The Biden administration is allowing migrants who are under 18 years old and cross by themselves to remain in the country while the government decides whether they have a legal claim to residency, either under asylum law or for some other reason. Mayorkas noted that 80% of the minors, most of whom are from the three Northern Triangle countries of Central America, have relatives in the U.S. and 40% have a parent. “These are children being reunited with their families who will care for them,” he said.

The Biden administration last week ended a Trump policy that made relatives reluctant to contact HHS to retrieve children for fear of being deported themselves. Besides setting up new temporary facilities to house migrant children, it is also backing aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to try to stem the flow of migrants at the source. Mayorkas took swipes at the previous administration for dismantling an asylum system that would have enabled a more “orderly” immigration system, cutting aid to Central America and failing to vaccinate Border Patrol agents.

Also, he said the Biden administration is working to make the asylum process shorter and to make it possible to petition from an applicant’s home country rather than make a dangerous and uncertain journey. “We have no illusions about how hard it is,” he said, “and we know it will take time.”

BEN FOX and ELLIOT SPAGAT Associated Press

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