US Supreme Court allows Trump to restrict asylum seekers at border
The Supreme Court ruled that immigrants arriving at the US-Mexico border cannot apply for asylum until they set foot in the country.
6-3 The decision would allow President Donald Trump, a Republican, to revive a policy first used in 2016 but canceled in 2021 under the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden.
Under federal law, an immigrant who “arrives” in the United States can apply for asylum, which the Trump administration argues ignores those stopped on the Mexican side of the border.
In a separate ruling, the high court ruled that the Trump administration could revoke temporary protections for more than 356,000 Syrian and Haitian immigrants that allowed them to remain in the United States.
Justice Alito delivered the court’s opinion Thursday, calling the case “clear.”
“In ordinary conversation no one can say that a person has ‘arrived’ somewhere…before the person enters that place,” he said.
The decision in Noem v Al Otro Lado means the Trump administration won its appeal against a lower court ruling that found its policy of returning asylum seekers was unlawful.
The policy is called “metering” because U.S. immigration authorities can use it to limit the number of asylum seekers allowed to seek protection each day on the grounds that they are too burdened to process additional requests.
Under federal law, any noncitizen who is “physically present in the United States” or “arrived in the United States” may make a formal claim that they are fleeing political, racial, or religious persecution in their home country.
An attorney for an immigrant advocacy group argued that asylum seekers arrive in the United States when they arrive at a port of entry.
When this case reached the Supreme Court in March, discussions focused on what it meant to reach the United States.
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked: “What is the magic thing or regulatory thing that we’re looking for where we say, ‘Oh, now we can say that person came to the United States’?”
Another conservative justice, Neil Gorsuch, asked whether a migrant came to the U.S. at the back of the line at a port of entry or at the waterfront of the Rio Grande, which flows along the Mexican border.
Deputy attorney general Vivek Suri defended the Trump administration, telling the court: “You can’t come to the United States while you’re standing in Mexico. This should be the end of this case.”
However, Kelsi Corkran of the Constitutional Advocacy and Protection Institute, which represents the immigrants, told the court that the immigrants arrived in the United States “just as they were about to step on the threshold of port entry.”
After returning to office in 2025, Trump announced a more comprehensive ban on asylum at the border, which is separate from the metering policy and also faces ongoing legal challenges.
