A federal judge in the U.S. state of Louisiana has blocked the White House’s plans to lift the Title 42 border policy on May 20. Title 42 is a Trump-era public health order that allows immigration officers to expel migrants from the southwest border, including asylum-seekers.

The judge ruled the Biden administration violated administrative law when it announced plans in April to stop the order.

The Biden administration is still pushing ahead to end the order.

The U.S. Justice Department filed an appeal immediately after the ruling with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, saying it believes its decision to lift Title 42 was legal.

The ruling has left many people in limbo, while also facing the threat of political persecution or gang violence if they return home.

Under current U.S. law, immigrants can apply for asylum if they are deemed to have a “credible fear” of persecution or torture in their home country.

The government has begun court-ordered screenings to determine if some families should be exempted from Title 42, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The screenings came after a March ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals that said migrant families falling under Title 42 cannot be expelled to places where they could be persecuted or tortured.

Biden also exempted unaccompanied minors from expulsions after taking office in 2021.

The number of people looking to enter the U.S. from the southern border has increased in recent months. An estimated 30,000 to 60,000 people are in northern Mexico waiting to cross the border, according to U.S. officials.

The demographics of the migrants at the southern border has also changed. Forty percent of migrants taken into custody come from countries other than Mexico. Many are from the northern triangle of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

According to data gathered by Pew Research, of the nearly 2.9 million encounters Border Patrol agents had at the southern border between April 2020 (the first full month after Title 42 went into effect) and March 2022, nearly 1.8 million of those encounters resulted in migrants being expelled under the order.

Despite the setback, the Biden administration plans to implement a new regulation next week to speed up the asylum claims process, Reuters reports citing a DHS official.

The new asylum process will allow officers to adjudicate claims directly and more quickly. However, the rollout of this process will begin slowly.

A coalition of states with Republican attorneys general sued to block the new asylum rules last month and a hearing in that case is scheduled for June.

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