{"id":4230,"date":"2026-03-25T01:16:57","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T01:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/25\/we-dont-have-an-actual-policy-supreme-court-debates-limits-on-asylum-seekers-usa-today\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T01:16:57","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T01:16:57","slug":"we-dont-have-an-actual-policy-supreme-court-debates-limits-on-asylum-seekers-usa-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/25\/we-dont-have-an-actual-policy-supreme-court-debates-limits-on-asylum-seekers-usa-today\/","title":{"rendered":"'We don't have an actual policy.' Supreme Court debates limits on asylum-seekers – USA Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2013 The Supreme Court<\/a> sounded open on March 24 to letting the federal government send back asylum-seekers<\/a> at the U.S.-Mexico border, although the justices also debated whether they can even rule on a policy that\u2019s not currently being used.
\u201cWe don\u2019t have an actual policy,\u201d Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of the court\u2019s three liberals, said during more than an hour of oral arguments. “None is on the table.”
The\u00a0practice often called ”metering”\u00a0<\/a>\u2013 used by Democratic and Republican administrations alike to manage the number of people who can claim asylum each day \u2013 was rescinded by the Biden administration.
But the Trump administration \u2212 which already has a sweeping ban on asylum at the border that is facing a different legal challenge \u2212 wants to be able to use it, calling the policy a \u201ccritical tool for addressing border surges.\u201d
\u201cI can\u2019t predict when the next border surge occurs,\u201d Vivek Suri, an attorney for the Justice Department, told the Supreme Court<\/a> during oral arguments. \u201cBut I can say that when it does occur, this is a tool (the Department of Homeland Security) will want in its tool box. It\u2019s not something the court should leave to future uncertainty.\u201d
The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that the government is required to process a claim once someone reaches a port of entry.
Immigrant rights organizations and asylum-seekers challenging the policy argue the government has used it to turn away people who are desperate,<\/strong> even when there\u2019s sufficient staffing and other resources to deal with them.
\u201cThis case was never about capacity,\u201d said Nicole Elizabeth Ramos of Al Otro Lado, an immigrant rights group that helped bring the initial 2017 class action lawsuit. \u201cIt was about cutting off access to a group of people that the government \u2013 specifically the president and his administration \u2013 deem undesirable.\u201d
In a 2020 report, internal watchdogs at the Homeland Security Department said that, regardless of a port’s actual capacity and capability, border patrol agents at some crossings routinely told migrants they weren\u2019t able to process them.
When Justice Sonia Sotomayor, another of the court\u2019s liberals, pressed the Justice Department about that report, Suri disputed it. He also said that the question the court is being asked to decide is whether the policy is legal under any circumstance.
But under questioning from Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of the court\u2019s six conservatives, Suri acknowledged the government believes it can turn back asylum-seekers even when border ports are not overwhelmed. \u00a0
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has said it needs flexibility to manage its varied agenda, which includes stopping drug trafficking and facilitating lawful trade and travel. \u00a0
To be granted asylum \u2013 a process that can take years \u2013 an applicant must demonstrate they have faced persecution based on one of five protected grounds: race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.
The 1986 Immigration and Nationality Act allows anyone \u201cwho is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States\u201d to apply for asylum.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0the best way to interpret \u201carrives in\u201d is that it doesn\u2019t mean the same thing as \u201cphysically present,\u201d which would be redundant.
Instead, the term \u201cencompasses those who encounter officials at the border, whichever side of the border they are standing on,\u201d a divided panel of judges said.
Otherwise, the court said, the law gives migrants an incentive to try to circumvent border crossings, something Congress likely did not intend.
The Justice Department says that interpretation defies the plain text of the law.
\u201cYou can\u2019t arrive in the United States while you\u2019re still standing in Mexico,\u201d Suri said. \u201cThat should be the end of this case.\u201d
He faced the most skeptical questions from the court\u2019s liberal justices, including Sotomayor who pressed Suri on whether the administration\u2019s interpretation violates the letter or spirit of federal law protecting refugees.
Some of the court\u2019s six conservative justices gave Suri a chance to emphasize the issues the government was trying to address when it used the policy.
Suri said ports of entries were overwhelmed with asylum seekers, including not always having enough food or shelter to house them.
Kavanaugh wondered if the court should even focus on the definition of \u201carrives in\u201d when deciding if the policy can be used.
\u201cThe bigger question, it seems to me, is can the government physically stop people before they get to wherever that line is, no matter how we define it,\u201d he said.
The practice of not letting an asylum-seeker pass through a checkpoint was used periodically during the Obama administration, when border officers began turning away\u00a0hundreds of Haitian asylum-seekers<\/a>\u00a0at ports of entry in California.
Customs and Border Protection officers could stop undocumented migrants from physically setting foot on U.S. soil whenever they considered a border crossing too busy.
The policy was formalized during the first Trump administration, and the Biden administration lifted the policy but allowed exceptions.
As a result, immigrant rights groups say, asylum-seekers lived for months in makeshift camps on the Mexico side of the border without reliable food, shelter or safety.
Their lawsuit is backed by the Catholic Church <\/a>and other religious organizations.
\u201cEvery major faith tradition makes protecting the stranger a core value,\u201d said Liz Theoharis, executive director at the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice. \u201cFor Christians like myself, protecting and welcoming the immigrant is one of Jesus\u2019 first and most powerful teachings.\u201d
More: <\/strong>Will the majority-Catholic Supreme Court listen to the church on immigration?<\/a><\/span>
But Eric Wessan, the top appellate lawyer for the Iowa attorney general\u2019s office, said the justices probably agreed to take the case because they believe the appeals court misread the law.
\u201cAs a textual matter,\u201d he said, \u201cI just find it really hard to believe that the Supreme Court that we have is going to interpret ‘in the United States’ to include people stopped outside the border that are not in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

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WASHINGTON \u2013 The Supreme Court sounded open on March 24 to letting the federal government send back asylum-seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border, although the justices also debated whether they can even rule on a policy that\u2019s not currently being used.\u201cWe don\u2019t have an actual policy,\u201d Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of the court\u2019s three liberals, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4230","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}