The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to back its policy barring migrants who cross the U.S-Mexico border from applying for asylum.
In a petition, the administration says the policy the president issued on the first day of his second term in January 2025, which declared the situation at the southern border an invasion, has led to a drastic drop in illegal border crossings.
The petition asks the justices to review a ruling by a federal appeals court in Washington that struck down the policy as unlawful in April, but allowed it to remain in effect as the Trump administration appealed.
That ruling, the Trump administration argues, “threatens to revive the chaos along the southwest border that the proclamation has fended off for the past year and a half.”
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Border Patrol saw an 84% drop in its encounters with migrants along the southern border in fiscal year 2025 compared to the previous year, according to the Pew Research Center. The figure is the lowest in more than 50 years.
“The proclamation and its asylum restrictions are thus critical pieces of American national and foreign policy; the judicial interference by the lower courts in the operation of those initiatives warrants this Court’s review,” the petition says.
A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled the Immigration and Nationality Act doesn’t allow Trump to suspend people’s rights to apply for asylum or remove them from the country through processes outside of those outlined in the statute.
“Denying asylum in one stroke, without any information about the affected individuals, necessarily ignores every risk of persecution they face when forced back to where they came from,” the D.C. Circuit wrote. “The challenged decision thus necessarily denies asylum even to foreign individuals who are sure to face persecution without it.”
Faisal Al-Juburi, co-CEO of The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, one of the groups suing the administration, said in a statement responding to the petition that the president isn’t above the law.
“By asking the Supreme Court to bypass laws that Congress passed to protect asylum seekers, the Trump administration is once again trying to seize unchecked power,” said Al-Juburi. “This isn’t just a policy disagreement. It’s a direct attack on our democracy and the checks and balances that keep us free.”
Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project and 13 migrants are the other plaintiffs in the lawsuit to stop the proclamation in February 2025.
“Already, government officials implementing this Proclamation have torn apart asylum seeking families and sent them to camps in third countries such as Costa Rica or Panama,” attorneys representing the immigrants and advocacy groups wrote to the appeals court last year. “Many asylum seekers were forced to accede to pressure to return to likely persecution or torture in their countries of origin.”
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