Supreme Court Considers Trump’s Border Asylum Restrictions Tuesday

The Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday about whether the Trump administration can revive a policy that allows officials to turn away asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. The case centers on whether people stopped on the Mexican side of the border have legally "arrived" in the United States.

WASHINGTON – The nation’s highest court will examine Tuesday whether President Donald Trump’s administration has the legal authority to reject asylum seekers when border officials determine crossings along the U.S.-Mexico frontier are too overwhelmed to process additional cases.

At the heart of the legal battle is a practice known as “metering” that Trump’s Republican administration may look to reinstate after his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden eliminated it. This approach permitted immigration authorities to halt asylum seekers at border entry points and delay processing their applications indefinitely.

The current Trump administration has challenged a lower court decision that found the practice broke federal law. This particular policy differs from the comprehensive asylum prohibition Trump implemented upon returning to office, which also faces ongoing court challenges.

Federal law states that migrants who “arrive in the United States” have the right to seek asylum and must undergo inspection by immigration officials. The specific legal question before the court concerns whether individuals detained on Mexico’s side of the border have technically arrived on U.S. soil.

Immigration authorities first started refusing asylum seekers at border crossings in 2016 during Democratic former President Barack Obama’s tenure as migrant numbers increased. The metering approach became official policy in 2018 during Trump’s initial presidency, giving border personnel authority to refuse processing asylum requests when the government determined it couldn’t manage more applications. Biden eliminated the policy in 2021.

In legal documents submitted to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration indicated it would likely restart metering “as soon as changed border conditions warranted that step,” though they provided no specific details.

The advocacy organization Al Otro Lado initiated the extended legal fight in 2017. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined in 2024 that federal statute mandates border agents examine all asylum seekers who “arrive” at official crossing points, regardless of whether they’ve entered U.S. territory, making the metering policy a violation of that requirement.

Trump administration attorneys contended in court filings that the phrase “arrive in” means “entering a specified place, not just coming close to it.”

“An alien who is stopped in Mexico does not arrive in the United States,” Justice Department lawyers wrote.

The court’s decision is anticipated by June’s end.

The Supreme Court has supported Trump in multiple immigration-related decisions made on an emergency basis since he resumed the presidency, including permitting deportations to third countries and revoking temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants in America.

Next week, the justices will consider arguments regarding Trump’s order to restrict birthright citizenship. The following month, they’ll hear the administration’s attempt to eliminate temporary protections for over 350,000 Haitians and approximately 6,100 Syrians residing in the United States.