The Supreme Court has delivered President Trump two significant victories in his mass deportation campaign.
On Thursday, the court’s conservative majority voted 6–3 in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado to approve a “metering” policy allowing Border Patrol agents to turn away migrants seeking asylum from the Mexican side of the southern border. The policy—introduced under the Obama administration and heavily expanded under Trump—will put the asylum hopes of hundreds of migrants and refugees at risk.
“We hold that an alien who is standing in Mexico does not ‘arriv[e] in the United States’ by attempting, and failing, to set foot in this country. An alien ‘arrives in the United States’ only when he crosses the border,” Alito wrote in the majority opinion.
In another 6–3 ruling, Mullin v. Doe, the conservative majority approved the Trump administration’s decision to end Temporary Protective Status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants, putting them at greater risk of being deported back to the dangerous situations they fled from under TPS. These are both countries that the State Department has deemed too dangerous for Americans to travel to.
“The Supreme Court’s decision to strip TPS from Haitian and Syrian communities is a betrayal of our values and of the promise our country made to protect people from displacement and harm,” New York Attorney General Letitia James wrote after the ruling. “I’ll never stop fighting for our immigrant neighbors and loved ones.”