Supreme Court Rules 6-3 for Trump Asylum Seekers Stopped at Border Have No Right to Processing

In a 6-3 decision that could reshape how America handles migrants at its southern border, the US Supreme Court ruled Thursday that asylum seekers physically stopped on the Mexican side of the border have not legally “arrived in the United States” and therefore cannot demand to have their claims processed.

The ruling revives the legal foundation for a policy known as “metering,” which allows immigration officials to indefinitely pause asylum processing when border crossings are deemed too overwhelmed to handle more claims. The Trump administration dropped strong hints it plans to bring the policy back.

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, keeping it simple “In ordinary speech, no one would say that a person ‘arrives in’ a place before the person enters that place.”

The Dissent Did Not Hold Back

Justice Sonia Sotomayor was so opposed she took the rare step of reading her dissent aloud from the bench a move reserved for rulings justices consider deeply wrong.

“More people will die,” she wrote bluntly, warning that the ruling would push migrants into dangerous illegal crossings, force them to wander along the border in hazardous conditions and leave others trapped in countries where they face violence for their race, religion or political beliefs. Kagan and Brown Jackson joined her dissent.

Two Wins for Trump in One Day

Thursday’s asylum ruling was not the only immigration victory for the administration. In a second ruling, also authored by Alito, the court cleared the way for the Trump administration to strip Temporary Protected Status from over 350,000 Haitian immigrants and 6,100 Syrians — a humanitarian designation that had shielded them from deportation.

The Department of Homeland Security called both rulings vindication, while human rights lawyers warned the decisions give the president near-unilateral power to override decades of established immigration law.

With the Supreme Court also expected to rule on birthright citizenship restrictions before the end of June, Thursday may just be the opening act.