The Supreme Court on Thursday said the Trump administration can turn away migrants seeking asylum along the U.S.-Mexico border by physically preventing them from crossing into the United States as they seek protection from persecution.
The administration had asked the court to permit the government to revive a policy, first used in 2016, as part of President Trump’s immigration crackdown. Under that so-called turn-back policy, the government had stopped asylum seekers from setting foot on U.S. soil, where federal law would have entitled them to try to claim asylum and receive protections.
The statute at issue says any noncitizen who is “physically present in the United States” or “arrives in the United States” can apply for asylum. Migrants who announce their intention to seek protection are then referred for an interview to evaluate their claims.
A major question in the case was what it meant to “arrive” in the United States. In its 6-to-3 ruling, the court said noncitizens must fully cross the border to gain the right to apply for asylum. The court’s conservative majority said migrants standing in Mexico do not “arrive” by “attempting, and failing, to set foot in this country.”
The three liberal justices disagreed, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor reading a summary of her dissent from the bench.
The Trump administration has taken steps to dismantle the asylum process for migrants more broadly and told the Supreme Court it wanted the flexibility to reinstitute the policy if needed to address a surge of migrants at the border. In separate cases, a judge in Rhode Island this month rejected the government’s indefinite hold on asylum applications and an appeals court in Washington said in April that the administration could not categorically deny asylum claims from people crossing from Mexico into the United States.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has generally been receptive to the Trump administration’s assertions of presidential power and has issued a series of temporary orders allowing Mr. Trump to carry out his policies while litigation proceeds in the lower courts.
But there have been exceptions. The court refused to allow the president to deploy hundreds of National Guard troops in the Chicago area over the objection of Illinois officials.
For decades, the government has interpreted the asylum law as providing migrants a right to seek protections at border crossings if they fear persecution because of their race, religion, nationality or political views. With fewer legal pathways to enter the United States, such claims have proliferated in recent years, with backlogs now totaling almost four million cases and lengthy wait times for hearings.
A surge of Haitians at the southern border near San Diego in 2016 first prompted the Obama administration to meter the flow of migrants allowed to cross into the country.
That policy was significantly expanded by Mr. Trump during his first term to all southern entry points — a policy that the administration said was necessary to deal with overcrowding and that immigrant rights advocates said was illegal and inhumane. It was rescinded by the Biden administration in 2021.
Lower courts repeatedly invalidated the policy after asylum seekers from Honduras, Nicaragua and Mexico sued in 2017, saying the policy was illegal and at odds with the nation’s long history of providing refuge to immigrants escaping persecution.
A district court judge said asylum seekers must be processed if they have arrived at the border, even if they are stopped before stepping onto U.S. territory. A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed, saying that a person who “presents herself to an official at the border has arrived, no matter which side of the border she is standing on.”
