US Supreme Court sides with Trump in asylum-processing case

Lead

The US Supreme Court has ruled that government officials can turn away asylum seekers at the southern border with Mexico if they have not yet set foot on US soil. The 6-3 decision, issued on Thursday, backs the federal government's authority to refuse processing asylum claims when border crossings are deemed too overburdened, overturning a lower court's finding that the policy violated federal law. As reported by Al Jazeera and Dawn, the ruling clears the way for the administration of President Donald Trump to revive a controversial practice known as 'metering', in which immigration agents physically block asylum seekers from crossing the border.

The Guardian reported that the decision fundamentally reshapes the US asylum system and allows the Trump administration to resume a practice it has sought for years to block migrants from setting foot on US soil, where federal law guarantees the right to claim asylum. The ruling concludes a legal battle that has spanned three administrations.

Coverage comparison

The three outlets covering the story — Al Jazeera, Dawn, and The Guardian — all focused on the ruling's immediate impact: allowing the Trump administration to revive the 'metering' policy. Al Jazeera's coverage highlighted the practice's controversial nature and the objections of rights groups, while Dawn framed the decision as a victory for Trump, noting that the administration may seek to revive the policy after it was dropped by Democratic predecessor Joe Biden. The Guardian emphasized the long-running nature of the policy dispute and the criticism from advocates and attorneys representing migrants.

The ruling broke down along ideological lines, with the court's six conservative justices — Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — in the majority, and the three liberal justices — Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Sonia Sotomayor — dissenting. Al Jazeera and The Guardian both noted this split, while Dawn described the decision as powered by the conservative justices.

Key Claims

• The 'metering' policy: According to Al Jazeera and Dawn, the policy allows US immigration officials to stop asylum seekers at the border and decline to process their claims, sometimes indefinitely. Rights groups, as reported by Al Jazeera, argue it is a way of bypassing domestic law requiring the US to grant the right to apply for asylum to anyone arriving in the country, and that physically blocking individuals incentivises more dangerous routes.

• The legal question: Under US law, a migrant who 'arrives in the United States' may apply for asylum and must be inspected by a federal immigration official. As explained by Dawn, the legal issue was whether asylum seekers stopped on the Mexican side of the border have arrived in the United States. Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the majority opinion, wrote that the answer is 'no', stating: "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."

• Alito's opinion: Alito also addressed the scope of the ruling, writing: "The wisdom of the policy of metering alien arrivals at the southern border is not before us. We decide only that an alien standing in Mexico does not 'arriv[e] in the United States'. The INA neither entitles such an alien to apply for asylum nor requires an immigration officer to inspect him." This was reported by Al Jazeera.

• Sotomayor's dissent: Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented strongly, with The Guardian reporting she penned a 35-page dissent, nearly twice as long as Alito's majority opinion. She wrote that the government may now circumvent a vast range of laws protecting asylum-seekers by simply blocking their entry at the border. She argued: "They may do so even if the asylum seeker is at the threshold of a port of entry designated to receive all noncitizens who seek entrance into the country. Even if the port of entry has ample capacity to inspect that person, including an available asylum officer trained to process asylum applications. Even if the asylum seeker is certain to be persecuted, or killed, if she is turned away." She added that the majority's interpretation is "driven almost entirely by a fixation on a single word: 'in.'"

• A second immigration case: Dawn reported that the ruling was one of two immigration-related cases decided by the court on Thursday backing Trump. The Supreme Court also cleared the way for the Trump administration to strip hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants of Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a humanitarian status that protects them from deportation. About 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians are believed to currently be living in the US under TPS, according to multiple sources.

• Policy context: The 'metering' policy is separate from a sweeping policy to deny entry to asylum seekers at the border that Trump announced after returning to the presidency last year. Dawn noted that this broader policy also faces an ongoing legal challenge.