Supreme Court To Consider If Migrants Must Cross Border To Seek Asylum

The Supreme Court will hear a case with massive implications for the government’s ability to limit asylum claims at the southern border.

The justices agreed Monday to weigh whether migrants who show up on the Mexican side of the border must be allowed to apply for asylum.

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, an alien who “arrives in the United States” can apply for asylum. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that even migrants who are stopped on the Mexican side of the border qualify as arriving in the U.S.

That interpretation of the law “deprives the Executive Branch of a critical tool for addressing border surges and for preventing overcrowding at ports of entry along the border,” the administration argued in its July petition.

“Before this litigation, border officials had repeatedly addressed migrant surges by standing at the border and preventing aliens without valid travel documents from entering,” Solicitor General John Sauer wrote in the petition. “The decision below declares that practice unlawful, on the theory that aliens stopped on the Mexican side of the border have a statutory right to apply for asylum in the United States and to be inspected by federal immigration officers.”

Several members of Congress wrote in an amicus brief that the Ninth Circuit “usurped the policymaking authority of the political branches.”

“The Ninth Circuit’s decision below effectively seized that exclusively political power by creating an entitlement to seek asylum for potentially millions of aliens whom Congress never authorized such relief,” they argued.