WASHINGTON —The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration can turn away migrants who show up at the US-Mexico border before they apply for asylum, in a victory for the White House’s immigration crackdown that prompted a tense exchange between two justices.
The high court ruled 6-3 in favor of a policy known as “metering,” in use during President Trump’s first term as well as Barack Obama’s administration, which capped the number of people who could apply for asylum each day.
Immigration advocates had claimed that aliens should be considered to “arrive” in the US once they reached the border and argued the policy violated federal law, stating that migrants can apply for asylum upon entry, regardless of whether they did so legally or illegally.
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito disagreed, writing in the majority opinion: “In ordinary speech, no one would say that a person ‘arrives in’ a place—for example, a house, a city, or a country—before the person enters that place.
“The context in which the phrase ‘arrives in the United States’ is used in the immigration statutes at issue here supports an ordinary-meaning reading.”
The administration had argued that the policy was necessary to deal with a massive influx of migrants at the southern border, adding that people who were initially turned away could always come back and attempt to apply later.
“This is a tremendous win for the Trump Administration, the rule of law, and common sense,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “President Trump remains committed to lawfully restoring integrity to our immigration system, which includes tackling the egregious abuses to our asylum system that the prior administration encouraged. We will always put the American people first.”
To qualify for asylum, migrants must show a fear of persecution in their homeland for specific reasons, like race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.
Once granted asylum, migrants are protected from deportation and can legally work, bring in immediate family, apply for legal residency, and seek citizenship.
All three Democrat-appointed justices dissented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor took the rare step of reading her dissent from the bench, adding extemporaneously that her colleagues’ ruling “regrettably and tragically extinguishes the light of the torch of the Statue of Liberty.”
“The consequences of today’s decision are predictable,” Sotomayor wrote. “More people will die. More people will attempt to cross the border illegally, and some will make it while others will not. More people will be forced to walk along the U.S.-Mexico border in dangerous conditions, trying to find a port that will inspect them. More people will turn back and be subjected to violence because of something they cannot or should not have to change about themselves … Because this is neither what Congress said nor what its words permit, I respectfully dissent.”
A visibly annoyed Alito rejoined that there “was much he would have added” to the reading of his opinion had he known Sotomayor would read her dissent and pointed out the policy had been used during two presidential administrations of opposing parties.
“I won’t add anything more to that,” concluded Alito, who finished his opinion by reminding: “The wisdom of the policy of metering alien arrivals at the southern border is not before us. We decide only that an alien standing in Mexico does not ‘arriv[e] in the United States.’ The [law] neither entitles such an alien to apply for asylum nor requires an immigration officer to inspect him.”
Metering was first used under Obama in 2016, when large numbers of Haitians appeared at the main crossing to San Diego from Tijuana, Mexico. It was expanded to all border crossings from Mexico during Trump’s first term.
The policy was terminated in 2020, when the government introduced greater restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, and former President Joe Biden formally rescinded it in 2021.
The same year, a California federal judge found that metering violated both asylum seekers’ rights and the law requiring screening. A divided Ninth Circuit appeals panel affirmed the ruling, but nearly half of the judges on the full court voted to rehear it, a strong signal that likely caught the attention of the Supreme Court.
Additional reporting by Ally Goelz
