The U.S. Supreme Court has recently agreed to reassess a longstanding immigration policy that barred asylum seekers from entering at ports along the southern U.S. border. President Donald Trump petitioned the justices to examine a Ninth Circuit decision that classified the policy as illegal.
The Biden administration abolished the practice known as “metering.” The Trump administration aims to preserve adaptability while augmenting its immigration enforcement initiatives.
In November, U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer asserted, “The Constitution delegates the power to regulate the border to the political branches, not the judiciary.” Sauer asserted that the ruling undermines Congress’s authority to formulate asylum policy, citing its connection to existing policies. It also substantially infringes upon the executive branch’s authority to regulate the nation’s borders.
The nonprofit immigrant rights organization, Al Otro Lado, along with 13 asylum-seekers who initiated the lawsuit at the heart of the dispute in 2017, expressed their support for the Ninth Circuit’s ruling and are prepared to defend it before the Supreme Court.
“The government’s turnback policy represented an illegal tactic to circumvent these obligations by physically impeding asylum-seekers at ports of entry and obstructing their access to cross the border for protection,” asserted attorneys for Al Otro Lado and the asylum-seekers. “Vulnerable families, children, and adults fleeing persecution were abandoned in perilous situations, facing violent assaults, abduction, and death.”
Sauer asserted, “Based on the reasoning of the decision below, [Customs and Border Patrol] was barred from impeding the entry of an individual who presented themselves at the border without a prior appointment.” An alien may claim to have arrived ‘in the United States,’ thereby requiring governmental inspection and processing of his asylum application, which would allow him to bypass the queue.
The asylum-seekers challenged the government’s petition, claiming that the appellate court’s ruling applied exclusively to a particular cohort of migrants.
Kelsi Brown Corkran, an attorney at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law, remarked, “Although the current administration’s border policies face imminent legal challenges, none of the plaintiffs’ claims in those cases depend on the issue presented by the petition here.” The court’s resolution of the matter would therefore amount to little more than an advisory opinion.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the Supreme Court’s decision to review its appeal. The White House referred inquiries about the reinstatement of the metering policy to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not address questions regarding the possible revival of the policy by the Trump administration.
Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated in an email, which included a link to the government’s petition, that “Our attorneys have unequivocally articulated that the Trump administration has consistently upheld the explicit interpretation of federal law and fundamental logic in this matter from the outset.” “We expect to present our case to the Supreme Court.”
The Immigration and Nationality Act mandates that individuals within the United States, regardless of their location, possess the right to seek asylum if they can demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution in their country of origin.
In 2016, due to a surge of Haitian asylum-seekers at the San Ysidro port of entry in Southern California, the Obama administration directed border agents to deny entry to newly arriving migrants.
Two years later, the Department of Homeland Security officially implemented the policy, providing all southern border ports with “metering guidance.”
According to the 2018 policy, border agents were tasked with identifying potential asylum-seekers and actively preventing their entry into U.S. territory.
In 2019, the Trump administration established a new barrier for migrants, stipulating that individuals who passed through one or more countries before arriving in the U.S. would be ineligible for asylum unless they had first sought protection in at least one of those transit countries.
A lower court has certified a class of asylum seekers who arrived before Trump’s transit rule, issuing an injunction that reinstates claims previously rejected under the 2019 policy.
The class promoted the progression of the case following the Biden administration’s repeal of the metering policy in 2021. The transit regulation was ultimately revoked in 2023.
In 2022, the lower court rendered a conclusive judgment, instituting a permanent injunction that prohibited the government from enforcing the asylum restrictions against that specific group. The court affirmed that individuals in this category had the right to pursue asylum in accordance with previous policy directives.
The Ninth Circuit evaluated the legality of the metering policy to determine if the remedy should be upheld.
The panel ruled in favor of the asylum-seekers, dismissing the government’s claims that migrants denied entry at ports were not unlawfully deprived of asylum under the metering policy because they were not present in the U.S. The Trump administration implored the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling, contending that alternative measures, such as the Biden-era CBP One application intended for asylum appointment scheduling for migrants, could be jeopardized.
