In another immigration win for the Trump administration, the Supreme Court, on Thursday, struck down a lower court ruling that had barred the federal government from turning asylum seekers away at the southern border, ruling 6-3, in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado that migrants standing on Mexican soil have not "arrived in the United States" and carry no statutory right to asylum processing or inspection.
Justice Alito wrote for the majority, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.
BREAKING: The Supreme Court delivers a MASSIVE win for Trump's immigration agenda!
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 25, 2026
SCOTUS reverses a lower court ruling that forced the federal government to accept migrants who hadn't even reached the border as "asylum seekers."
The vote is 6-3.
The case turned on two words in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Under the INA, migrants who are "physically present in" or who "arrive in" the United States may apply for asylum. Al Otro Lado, an immigration advocacy group, and a certified class of asylum seekers argued that walking up to a port of entry and facing a U.S. officer satisfies that requirement, foot across the line or not. The 9th Circuit agreed.
Alito signaled at oral argument in March where the majority was headed. He asked respondents' counsel whether a guest has "arrived in" a house when the homeowner locks the door before she steps inside. Counsel said being blocked at the threshold still counts.
The opinion rejected that reading flatly.
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. A running back does not arrive in the end zone when he is tackled at the 1-yard line by the defense.
The majority also held that reading asylum obligations onto migrants still in Mexico would give the statute extraterritorial reach Congress never authorized.
The policy at issue, known as metering, began in 2016. CBP officers at crowded ports started turning asylum seekers away and telling them to return later. Some waited weeks. A district court declared the practice unlawful, and DHS rescinded it in November 2021. The government then asked the Supreme Court to reverse the lower court's judgment regardless, telling the justices that metering was an "important tool" it intended to revive.
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The Court obliged.
Thomas concurred separately. He argued the district court's classwide declaratory relief may have been barred outright by 8 U.S.C. § 1252(f)(1) and that any statute compelling a president to admit aliens over his objection raises serious questions about executive authority to exclude.
Sotomayor dissented, joined by Kagan and Jackson. Her core argument was straightforward: The majority's reading makes "arrives in" do no independent work, collapsing it entirely into the "physically present" clause in the same sentence and violating a basic rule of statutory construction, writing:
The Court today holds that the Executive Branch may circumvent all these mandatory procedures by having U.S. immigration officers stand at the border and physically block noncitizens from setting a foot onto U.S. soil.
Jackson filed separately on justiciability, arguing the whole dispute was moot the moment DHS rescinded metering, and the Court had no business deciding the question at all.
The government's own inspector general documented, while metering was running, that the policy drove some migrants to attempt illegal crossings rather than wait at official ports. The majority did not mention that finding. California, New York, and other states with pending port-of-entry challenges now face litigation under a ruling that gives the government a free hand to turn people back before they ever set foot on U.S. soil.
Editor’s Note: Democrat politicians and their radical supporters will do everything they can to interfere with and threaten ICE agents enforcing our immigration laws.
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