Supreme Court considers letting Trump administration revive restrictive immigration asylum policy
WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court There was debate Tuesday about whether the Trump administration could revive the immigration policy used to turn away immigrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Some conservative judges welcomed the Justice Department’s proposal push to topple A lower court ruling against the practice known as metering. Immigration officials have limited the number of people who can apply for asylum, saying the surge at the border must be addressed.
Advocates say the policy created a humanitarian crisis during President Donald Trump’s first term, as people who were turned away settled in makeshift camps in Mexico while they waited for a chance at asylum.
That policy is not currently in effect, and Trump ordered a broader suspension of the asylum system at the beginning of his second term.
But the administration argues that the metrics remain a “critical tool” used under both parties’ administrations and should be made available if necessary in the future.
While some justices appeared open to that argument, others raised questions about whether the policy would allow people who entered the country illegally to apply for asylum and whether newcomers seeking legal entry at the border would be blocked.
“Why would Congress grant privilege to someone who entered the United States illegally?” Judge Brett Kavanaugh asked.
A Trump administration lawyer suggested that people who return one day could potentially return later. “It says our port is at capacity today, try again another day,” said deputy attorney general Vivek Suri.
Associated Press found thousands of immigrants There were waiting lists when the policy was in effect in 2019.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, immigrants to the United States must be able to apply for asylum if they fear persecution in their home country. The legal dispute at the heart of the measurement case centers around the meaning of the words “arrive.”
The Justice Department argues that means anyone already in the United States, so it doesn’t apply to people authorities stop on the Mexican side of the border. But immigration lawyers say the law has long meant that anyone arriving at a port of entry must be able to apply, and should stay that way.
“This life-saving protection, and more importantly, access to it, is enshrined in our law and has been for decades,” American Immigration Council attorney Rebecca Cassler said after the arguments.
Chief Justice John Roberts questioned the immigrants’ attorney about exactly where someone would need to be to seek asylum. But Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson suggested those questions were difficult to answer when the policy was not used.
“It seems to me that we have a lot of assumptions about how this policy has worked in the past and how it will work in the future, but right now we don’t have a policy in place that we can really make a decision on,” he said.
The measurement was first used during President Barack Obama’s administration, when large numbers of Haitians appeared at the main crossing from Tijuana, Mexico, to San Diego. It was expanded to include all border crossings from Mexico during Trump’s first term in the White House.
The practice ended in 2020 when the coronavirus outbreak led the government to impose greater restrictions on asylum seekers. President Joe Biden has officially rescinded the use of metering in 2021.
Also that year, U.S. District Judge Cynthia Bashant, an Obama nominee, ruled that the measurements violated immigrants’ constitutional rights and federal law requiring authorities to screen anyone arriving at the border to seek asylum.
The divided 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed his ruling, but nearly half the justices on the San Francisco-based appeals court voted to rehear the case; This is a strong signal that may have caught the judges’ attention.
People seeking asylum in the United States can apply for asylum when they arrive on American soil, regardless of whether they arrived legally. To qualify, they must show that they fear persecution in their home country for specific reasons, such as race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.
Once people are granted asylum, they cannot be deported. They can work legally, bring immediate family members into the country, apply for legal residency, and eventually seek U.S. citizenship.
The death penalty case is one of several immigration cases in which the court has considered the term, including Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship for babies born illegally in the United States and the administration’s effort to strip legal protections for immigrants fleeing instability and armed conflict.
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Video journalist Nathan Ellgren contributed to this report.
