Supreme Court Greenlights Turning Away Asylum-Seekers at the Border

The Supreme Court cleared the way in a Thursday ruling for the government to turn away more asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The 6-3 decision in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, delivered by Justice Samuel Alito, favored the Trump administration’s interpretation of an asylum clause in the Immigration and Nationality Act. The court ruled that immigrants who appear at ports of entry on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border have not “arrived” in the country and are therefore not eligible to apply for asylum and be inspected by an immigration officer.

“An alien standing in Mexico does not ‘arriv[e] in the United States’ by attempting, and failing, to set foot in this country,” reads the majority opinion, joined by the five other conservative justices. “An alien ‘arrives in the United States’ only when he crosses the border. The INA thus neither entitles an alien standing in Mexico to apply for asylum nor requires an immigration officer to inspect him.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Sotomayor read from her dissent from the bench.

The decision allows for the reinstatement of the “metering” policy that was first instituted by the Obama administration in 2016. Metering permitted Customs and Border Patrol officials to turn back asylum seekers without valid travel documents.

The opinion downplayed the effects of the policy.

“Metering does not permanently bar any alien from arriving and applying for asylum. It merely delays entry,” it states.

“[R]espondents’ argument that the Government might someday prevent all potential arriving asylum applicants from reaching the point where they could file an application addresses a hypothetical future policy, not the rescinded metering policy at issue, which merely delayed entry to improve conditions at certain ports of entry,” it adds.

Metering was initially used by the Obama administration to manage a surge of Haitian immigrants who predominantly traveled to the San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego to seek asylum. The first Trump administration expanded and formalized the policy in 2018.

Sotomayor blasted the majority opinion, saying it fixated on a single word.

“The majority ignores the statutory context and history, not to mention the longstanding position of the Executive Branch, all of which show that any noncitizen arriving at our doorstep and seeking admission must be inspected and allowed to apply for asylum, regardless of whether her foot has crossed the threshold,” she wrote in the 35-page dissent.

The immigrant rights group Al Otro Lado and 13 asylum seekers disputed the policy in federal court. They argued that U.S. law requires the government to review claims for relief to people who seek it at the border.

The issue rose to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, where a divided panel ruled in October 2024 that a “noncitizen stopped at the border is eligible to apply for asylum.” The Biden administration had already rescinded the policy in 2021.

DHS General Counsel James Percival described the policy as an important tool in border security.

“We had to go all the way to SCOTUS to vindicate the principle that an alien is not ‘in the United States’ until he is, in fact, in the United States,” he said in an X post.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case last year after the 9th Circuit Court denied the federal government’s request to revisit the case. Solicitor General John Sauer argued incourt filings that the Court of Appeals’ decision “deprives the Executive Branch of a critical tool for addressing border surges and for preventing overcrowding at ports of entry along the border.”

Kelsi Brown Corkran, the attorney representing Al Otro Lado, wrote in herfiling that the government rescinded metering and therefore the “question presented thus has almost no

present implications, and likely no future implications either.”

She argued that the Trump administration’s interpretation would “empower border officials” to render the Immigration and Nationality Act’s asylum clause “wholly inoperable at ports of entry — the designated places where noncitizens may lawfully come into the United States — by simply blocking asylum seekers from stepping on U.S. soil.”

This article has been updated with a comment from the DHS general counsel.