The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration can reject asylum claims from people who attempt but fail to enter the United States at southern border ports of entry, resolving a legal dispute that has stretched across multiple administrations.
The case centered on whether asylum seekers must be processed once they reach a port of entry, or whether Border Patrol agents can turn them away if they haven't yet crossed into U.S. territory. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, framed the question in stark terms: "An alien standing in Mexico does not 'arrive in the United States' by attempting, and failing, to set foot in this country."
The policy at issue, sometimes called metering, allows Customs and Border Protection to manage capacity at ports by limiting how many people can apply for asylum on any given day. Those denied entry typically wait in Mexico until traffic slows and ports have room to process more applicants. The system still permits people with valid travel documents to enter whenever they wish.
Border Patrol first deployed metering in 2016 under the Obama administration to handle surges of asylum seekers. The first Trump administration expanded its use before it was struck down by a federal judge during the Biden presidency.
During oral arguments, Alito pressed lawyers for Al Otro Lado, a nonprofit legal services group that aids migrants, with a hypothetical: if someone knocks on a house's front door, have they arrived inside? The question foreshadowed the Court's reasoning that asylum seekers at a port of entry occupy a legal gray zone, not yet within U.S. borders in the eyes of the law.
James Percival, the Department of Homeland Security's General Counsel, hailed the decision as validating a basic principle. "We had to go all the way to SCOTUS to vindicate the principle that an alien is not 'in the United States' until he is, in fact, in the United States," he said.
Author James Rodriguez: "The Court's logic is clean on the law, but the human reality at the border remains messy, and this ruling gives the government broad discretion to manage asylum flow without having to hear cases at all."
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