Supreme Court Seems Sympathetic to Allowing Admin to Block Asylum Seekers at the Border

The Supreme Court seemed poised on March 24 to accept the Trump administration’s argument that the government can block asylum seekers from requesting asylum at the border.

The argument hinges on whether these people have “arrived in” the United States.

A group of 13 asylum seekers filed suit in 2017 to challenge a policy called “metering,” under which border agents, primarily at U.S. ports of entry, turn away asylum seekers to avoid overcrowding of border facilities. A federal law says that “any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States … may apply for asylum,” regardless of legal status.

“Do you think someone who comes to the front door of a house and knocks at the door has arrived in the house?” Justice Samuel Alito asked Kelsi Brown Corkran, who was representing the immigrants.

Corkran said that, before the metering policy was implemented, the immigrants simply passed through a turnstile to make their asylum claim. There was no border agent to turn them away, and Congress had not envisioned that scenario when drafting the law.

Metering began under President Barack Obama and continued until it was rescinded by President Joe Biden in 2021—although his administration continued to defend its legality.

The asylum seekers argued that the policy violated the Immigration and Nationality Act, which requires immigration officers to inspect “an alien present in the United States who has not been admitted or who arrives in the United States.”

Corkran said that a person who presented himself at the border had, for legal purposes, “arrived.”

The exact meaning of the language in the statute was the recurring theme of the arguments on March 24. Alito noted that Corkran, along with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, had often used the phrase “arrives at,” while the statute says “arrives in.”

Sotomayor told Assistant Solicitor General Vivek Suri that the law needed to be read in proper context.

“Someone on a plane arriving to land in LaGuardia may not have put their foot on U.S. land, but they’ve arrived in the United States,” Sotomayor said. “They’re arriving. They’re knocking on the door.”

But Justice Elena Kagan said it seemed that parts of the law didn’t make sense unless they applied to people already in the country.

She quoted a part of the law that said when an immigrant is deemed inadmissible, “the officer shall order the alien removed from the United States.”

“Now to me, that suggests that you remove somebody from the United States … when they already have crossed the threshold, not when they are knocking at the door,” she said.

Sotomayor also made reference to a House report on the law, which provided an interpretation matching Corkran’s. The report said the law applies to an immigrant “who is physically present in the United States or at the border,” Sotomayor said.

Suri reiterated that the statute itself says “arrives in.”

Jackson suggested that the “practical implication” of the government’s position is that an illegal immigrant who manages to make it across the border would be treated better than one who tries to enter legally but is turned away.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked whether the Trump administration intends to resume metering. Suri told her there were no immediate plans to do so, but the administration wants to reserve the right to do so in the future.