By KEVIN McGILL-As­so­ci­at­ed Press

NEW OR­LEANS (AP) — The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion said Fri­day it has be­gun phas­ing out use of a pan­dem­ic-re­lat­ed rule that al­lows mi­grants to be ex­pelled with­out an op­por­tu­ni­ty to seek asy­lum as 22 states fight in court to pre­serve the pol­i­cy.

U.S. au­thor­i­ties have processed more sin­gle adults from Guatemala, Hon­duras and El Sal­vador in re­cent weeks un­der im­mi­gra­tion laws, which in­clude a right to seek asy­lum, said Blas Nuñez-Ne­to, act­ing as­sis­tant Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty sec­re­tary for bor­der and im­mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy. The pan­dem­ic-re­lat­ed rule is set to ex­pire May 23.

Nuñez-Ne­to’s state­ment was part of a fil­ing in fed­er­al court in Lafayette, Louisiana, where Louisiana, Ari­zona and Mis­souri sued this month to keep the rule. Eigh­teen oth­er states lat­er joined and, on Thurs­day, the states asked a judge to stop what they called the “pre­ma­ture im­ple­men­ta­tion” of the end of the rule.

Nuñez-Ne­to said ap­ply­ing non-health re­lat­ed im­mi­gra­tion laws was “not nov­el” dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and that in­creas­ing use of them on sin­gle adults from Cen­tral Amer­i­can coun­tries will help pre­pare for the May 23 ex­pi­ra­tion.

About 14% of sin­gle adults from Guatemala, Hon­duras and El Sal­vador were processed un­der im­mi­gra­tion laws dur­ing a sev­en-day pe­ri­od end­ing Thurs­day, Nuñez-Ne­to said. That’s up from on­ly 5% in March, ac­cord­ing to gov­ern­ment fig­ures.

Sin­gle adults from those coun­tries have been tar­get­ed un­der the rule be­cause Mex­i­co has agreed to take them back while the rule is in ef­fect, an op­tion that will dis­ap­pear for U.S. au­thor­i­ties when the pow­ers are lift­ed.

It was un­clear how quick­ly the judge in the case, U.S. Dis­trict Judge Robert Sum­mer­hays, ap­point­ed by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, would rule on the states’ re­quest for a re­strain­ing or­der.

Mean­while, the state of Texas on Fri­day filed its own chal­lenge to the ter­mi­na­tion of the rule in fed­er­al court in Vic­to­ria, Texas. The case had not been as­signed to a judge as of Fri­day af­ter­noon. The Jus­tice De­part­ment de­clined com­ment on the Texas suit.

Mi­grants have been ex­pelled more than 1.8 mil­lion times un­der the rule, which was in­voked by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion in March 2020 to pre­vent the spread of COVID-19.

Ad­vo­cates for asy­lum-seek­ers sup­port the end to the rule, which they say en­dan­gers peo­ple flee­ing per­se­cu­tion back home and vi­o­lates rights to seek pro­tec­tion un­der U.S. law and in­ter­na­tion­al treaty. The states chal­leng­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion say the U.S. is not ready for a like­ly in­flux of mi­grants re­sult­ing from the rule’s end, strain­ing pub­lic ser­vices and economies.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer El­liot Sp­a­gat in San Diego con­tributed to this re­port.