The Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Trump administration to turn away asylum seekers before they set foot on U.S. soil, delivering a landmark victory that reshapes decades of immigration law and gutted protections that previously allowed migrants to claim refuge once they reached American territory.
The 6-3 decision permits federal agents at the U.S.-Mexico border to deploy what's known as the "turn-back" or "metering" policy, stopping migrants from physically entering the United States where federal law has traditionally guaranteed them the right to seek asylum and protection from persecution.
The case turned on a single word: what does it mean to "arrive in" the United States? Justice Samuel Alito's majority opinion framed the question in plain language. "In ordinary speech, no one would say that a person 'arrives in' a place ... before the person enters that place," he wrote.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor attacked the logic in a searing 35-page dissent, nearly double the length of Alito's majority opinion. She accused the court of being obsessed with one word while ignoring the broader statutory context. "Words, however, must be read in context and with attention to how they fit into the statute as a whole," she wrote.
The ruling has alarmed human rights groups, which say it effectively nullifies international and U.S. asylum laws requiring government officials to examine people at ports of entry and prevent dangerous deportations.
Joining Alito were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Dissenting were Justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Sotomayor.
In a related 6-3 victory announced the same day, the court sided with the Trump administration in stripping temporary protected status from hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians who had been legally residing in the country and shielded from deportation.
The two rulings represent a sweeping hardline turn on immigration policy, targeting populations that have built lives and roots in the United States over many years.
Author James Rodriguez: "The Court just handed the administration a sledgehammer to dismantle asylum protections that have stood for generations, and the dissenters' warnings about what comes next will likely prove prescient."
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