Supreme Court allows Trump to restrict asylum seekers at the border

2026-06-25 17:38:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

The Supreme Court has ruled that migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border do not have the right to apply for asylum until they enter the country.

The 6-3 decision will allow President Donald Trump, a Republican, to revive a policy first used in 2016 but repealed in 2021 under the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden.

Under federal law, a migrant who "arrives" in the U.S. can apply for asylum, which the Trump administration had argued excluded those detained on the Mexican side of the border.

In a separate ruling, the high court ruled that the Trump administration can strip more than 356,000 Syrian and Haitian immigrants of the temporary protections that allow them to remain in the US.

Justice Alito delivered the court's opinion Thursday, calling the case "straightforward."

"In ordinary speech, no one would say that a person 'arrives at' a place... before entering that place," he said in his opinion.

The ruling in Noem v. Al Otro Lado means the Trump administration has won its appeal against a lower court ruling that ruled the asylum pushback policy was illegal.

The policy is called a "metering" because US 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 overwhelmed to process additional requests.

Under federal law, any non-citizen who is "physically present in the United States" or "arrives in the United States" can file a formal claim that they are fleeing political, racial, or religious persecution in their country of origin.

A lawyer for an immigrant advocacy group had argued that asylum seekers arrive in the US when they arrive at a port of entry.

When this case reached the Supreme Court in March, the arguments focused on what it means to arrive in the US.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative, asked: "What is the magic thing, or the dispositive thing, that we are looking for when we say, 'Ah, now that person, shall we say, arrives in the United States?'"

Justice Neil Gorsuch, another conservative, asked whether an immigrant at the end of the line at a port of entry, or at the edge of the Rio Grande River, which flows along the border with Mexico, had arrived in the US.

Vivek Suri, an assistant attorney general, defending the Trump administration, told the court: "You can't arrive in the United States while you're still in Mexico. That should be the end of this matter."

But Kelsi Corkran, of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Defense, who represented the migrants, told the court that migrants have arrived in the US when they are at "the threshold of the port entrance ready to cross."

After returning to office in 2025, Trump also announced a broader ban on asylum at the border, which is separate from the asylum-measure policy and also faces an ongoing legal challenge./CNA