Asylum seekers may be turned away at the southern border, Supreme Court rules
WASHINGTON— Asylum seekers may be turned away without hearing at southern border The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday A historic retreat from the promise of relief to those who said they were fleeing persecution.
The justices disagreed on whether this was a simple disagreement over legal wording or a moral question involving desperate families.
The court’s conservatives, who sided with the Trump administration, said: Refugee Act 1980 It offers asylum to immigrants “coming to the United States” but not to those who are turned away when they approach a border crossing or port of entry.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. “This case raises a simple question using the word ‘in’. In ordinary conversation, no one can say that a person ‘arrives’ at a place – for example, a house, a city or a country – before entering that place,” he said.
Liberal opponents agreed with immigrant rights lawyers who saw it as an absurd interpretation of the law.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the asylum law stemmed from “international moral considerations following the Holocaust and World War II.”
He told about his famous journey MS St. Louis in 1939. More than 900 Jewish refugees attempted to escape persecution in Nazi Germany by boarding a ship that was turned upside down for Cuba and the United States.
Most of the passengers returned to Europe, he said, and hundreds died in the Holocaust.
“Congress passed the Refugee Act in 1980 because it did not want this country to repeat the mistakes of its past,” Sotomayor wrote. “But if refugees on the MS St. Louis were to march to a port of entry on our southern border today, the majority interpretation would allow immigration officials to refuse even to consider asylum applications by physically preventing them from setting foot on U.S. soil.”
Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed.
The decision supports the repatriation policy, which began in 2016 as an emergency response to the influx of Haitian immigrants at the San Ysidro border crossing.
The Department of Homeland Security said those asylum seekers should wait on the Mexican side of the border until they can return for a scheduled interview. The policy was expanded to other border crossings but was challenged as illegal in federal court in San Diego.
Last year there was a split The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals gave its decision that these restrictions are illegal if they prevent immigrants from applying for asylum.
“‘Arrive’ means ‘to reach the destination,'” Judge Michelle Friedland wrote. “The person who confronted the border officer ‘arrived’.”
He said the “government’s reading would reflect a radical restructuring of the right to apply for asylum, as it would give the executive broad discretion to prevent people from applying by blocking them at the border.”
The 2-1 decision upheld the federal judge in San Diego who ruled against immigrants who filed a class-action lawsuit and said they were wrongly denied an asylum hearing.
However, Lawyer Gen. D. John Sauer called on the Supreme Court to review and reverse the appellate decision, noting that 15 judges from the 9th Circuit joined dissenting opinions that called the decision “radical” and “patently wrong.”
The administration argued that federal immigration law “does not give aliens worldwide the right to enter the United States to seek asylum.”
Sauer said people from abroad “may seek to be accepted as refugees,” but the government can enforce its laws by “preventing illegal immigrants from setting foot on U.S. soil.”
Advocates of the asylum system condemned the decision.
“We believe today’s decision violates international law and the clear intent of Congress,” said Erika Pinheiro, executive director of Al Otro Lado, the immigrant support organization that is leading the legal fight. “For decades, the United States has allowed individuals and families fleeing persecution, torture, and death to seek protection at U.S. borders.”
“Persecution is no substitute for real solutions. Preventing people from seeking asylum at official ports of entry will do nothing to fix our broken immigration system. It just makes the situation more chaotic and dangerous for vulnerable families,” said Rebecca Cassler, senior litigation attorney at the American Immigration Council.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform applauded the decision.
“Our immigration laws are written to be pro-enforcement, not anti-enforcement,” said Christopher J. Hajec, FAIR deputy general counsel. “Thus, courts that impose knee-jerk sanctions, as the 9th Circuit did here, often must violate basic logic. We are pleased that the Supreme Court found that the lower court’s reading would render the immigration law inconsistent and overturn it.”
