Supreme Court may restrict asylum claims from those arriving at the southern border

WASHINGTON- The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear an appeal from the Trump administration that argues migrants do not have the right to seek asylum at the southern border.

Instead, the government says border agents could prevent asylum seekers from entering U.S. soil and reject their requests without a hearing.

The new case aims to clarify immigration laws and resolve an issue that has divided previous administrations and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Under federal law, migrants facing persecution in their home country may apply for asylum and receive a screening hearing if they are “physically present in the United States” or if such a person “arrives in the United States.”

However, since 2016, the Obama, Biden and Trump administrations have responded to migrant surges at the border by passing temporary rules requiring migrants to wait on the Mexican side before they can seek asylum.

But in May, a divided 9th Circuit court ruled that those restrictions were illegal if they prevented migrants from seeking asylum.

“To arrive means to reach a destination,” Justice Michelle Friedland wrote, citing a dictionary definition. “A person who presents himself to an agent at the border has “arrived”.

She said this interpretation “does not radically expand the right to asylum.” In contrast, “the government’s reading would reflect a radical reconstruction of the right to seek asylum, because it would give the executive branch broad discretion to prevent people from seeking asylum by blocking them at the border.”

“We therefore conclude that a noncitizen arrested by U.S. authorities at the border is eligible to apply for asylum,” she wrote.

The 2-1 ruling upheld a San Diego federal judge’s ruling that sided with migrants who filed a class-action lawsuit and said they were wrongly denied an asylum hearing.

But Attorney General D. John Sauer urged the Supreme Court to review and overturn the appellate ruling, noting that 15 9th Circuit judges joined dissents that called the ruling “sweeping” and “clearly erroneous.”

In football, “a running back does not get into the end zone when he is stopped at the one-yard line,” Sauer wrote.

He said federal immigration law “does not grant aliens from around the world the right to enter the United States to seek asylum.” From abroad, they can “apply for admission as refugees,” he said, but the government can enforce its laws by “preventing illegal immigrants from entering American soil.”

Immigrant rights lawyers advised the court to reject the appeal because the government no longer uses the “counting” system that required migrants to wait for a hearing.

Since June 2024, they said, the government has restricted inspections and treatment of these noncitizens under a different legislative provision that authorizes the president to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens” if he determines they would be “prejudicial to the interests of the United States.”

The government also regularly returns migrants who cross the border illegally.

But the solicitor general said the asylum provision should be clarified.

The justices voted to hear Noem v. Al Otro Lado early next year and decide “whether an alien arrested on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border ‘arrives in the United States’ within the meaning of federal immigration law.”