Trump wants a border win. Will Supreme Court allow limits on asylum-seekers?
Trump wants a border win. Will Supreme Court allow limits on asylum-seekers?
Maureen Groppe, USA TODAYTue, March 24, 2026 at 7:01 AM UTC
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WASHINGTON – As the battle over immigration roils the country, the Supreme Court on March 24 will debate whether the federal government can send back asylum-seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The practice often called ''metering" – used by Democratic and Republican administrations alike to manage the number of people who can claim asylum each day – is not being used now. But the Trump administration wants to be able to use it, calling the policy a “critical tool for addressing border surges.”
The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that the government is required to process a claim once someone reaches a port of entry.
Immigrant rights organizations and asylum-seekers challenging the policy argue the government has used it to turn away people who are desperate, even when there’s sufficient staffing and other resources to deal with them.
In a 2020 report, internal watchdogs at the Homeland Security Department said that, regardless of a port's actual capacity and capability, border patrol agents at some crossings routinely told migrants they weren’t able to process them.
“This case was never about capacity,” said Nicole Elizabeth Ramos of Al Otro Lado, an immigrant rights group that helped bring the initial 2017 class action lawsuit. “It was about cutting off access to a group of people that the government – specifically the president and his administration – deem undesirable.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has said it needs flexibility to manage its varied agenda, which includes stopping drug trafficking and facilitating lawful trade and travel.
Migrants crossed the Rio Grande and approach the Texas National Guard to enquire when they will be allowed to be processed by Customs and Border Protection to seek asylum in El Paso, Texas on Dec. 20, 2022Can the U.S. legally turn back asylum-seekers?
To be granted asylum – a process that can take years – an applicant must demonstrate they have faced persecution based on one of five protected grounds: race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.
The 1986 Immigration and Nationality Act allows anyone “who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States” to apply for asylum.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the best way to interpret “arrives in” is that it doesn’t mean the same thing as “physically present,” which would be redundant.
Instead, the term “encompasses those who encounter officials at the border, whichever side of the border they are standing on,” a divided panel of judges said.
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Otherwise, the court said, the law gives migrants an incentive to try to circumvent border crossings, something Congress likely did not intend.
The Justice Department says that interpretation defies the plain text of the law.
“The ordinary meaning of 'arrives in' refers to entering a specified place, not just coming close to it,” the government said in its appeal.
Border policy used in past administrations
The practice of not letting an asylum-seeker pass through a checkpoint was used periodically during the Obama administration, when border officers began turning away hundreds of Haitian asylum-seekers at ports of entry in California.
Customs and Border Protection officers could stop undocumented migrants from physically setting foot on U.S. soil whenever they considered a border crossing too busy.
The policy was formalized during the first Trump administration, and the Biden administration lifted the policy but allowed exceptions.
As a result, immigrant rights groups say, asylum-seekers lived for months in makeshift camps on the Mexico side of the border without reliable food, shelter or safety.
Members of the CASA advocacy group hold Save Asylum signs during a press conference on Jan. 18, 2024.Religious groups back migrants
Their lawsuit is backed by the Catholic Church and other religious organizations.
“Every major faith tradition makes protecting the stranger a core value,” said Liz Theoharis, executive director at the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice. “For Christians like myself, protecting and welcoming the immigrant is one of Jesus’ first and most powerful teachings.”
But Eric Wessan, the top appellate lawyer for the Iowa attorney general’s office, said the justices probably agreed to take the case because they believe the appeals court misread the law.
“As a textual matter,” he said, “I just find it really hard to believe that the Supreme Court that we have is going to interpret 'in the United States' to include people stopped outside the border that are not in the United States.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court debates policy of turning away asylum-seekers at border
Source: “AOL Breaking”
