“AN IMPORTANT TOOL”
James Percival, general counsel at the US Department of Homeland Security, welcomed Thursday’s ruling, saying it “opens up an important tool to continue securing our southern border.”
“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,” Percival said, using shorthand for the Supreme Court of the United States. “We have yet AGAIN been vindicated by the Supreme Court.”
Melissa Crow, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, said the ruling “should sound the alarm for anyone who cares about human rights and the rule of law.”
The ruling, Crow said, “suggests the president may unilaterally override decades of established law and trample on people’s legal rights if doing so suits his political agenda.”
A MIGRANT SURGE
US immigration officials began turning away asylum seekers at the border in 2016 under Democratic former President Barack Obama amid a migrant surge. The metering policy was formalized in 2018 during Trump‘s first term in office, with border officials authorized to decline processing asylum claims when the government decides it is unable to handle additional applications. Biden rescinded the policy in 2021.
The Trump administration has said it likely would resume metering “as soon as changed border conditions warranted that step,” without providing specifics. Trump has pursued hardline immigration policies since his return to office last year.
The advocacy group Al Otro Lado launched the long-running legal challenge in 2017. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2024 ruled that federal law requires border agents to inspect all asylum seekers who “arrive” at designated border crossings, even if they have not yet crossed into the United States, and the metering policy violated that obligation.
The Supreme Court also backed Trump in several immigration-related rulings issued on an emergency basis since his return to the presidency, including allowing him to deport migrants to countries other than their own and to revoke temporary legal status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants.
The court is expected to rule by around the end of June on the legality of Trump‘s directive to restrict birthright citizenship in the United States.
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