To be granted asylum, applicants must prove they faced persecution based on race, religion, nationality, or political opinion. Membership in a particular social group. It can take many years.
Is Trump support declining due to immigration policy?
The growing backlash against ICE’s tactics is accelerating a major shift in public opinion regarding President Trump’s immigration strategy.
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court will consider March 24 whether the federal government can deport asylum seekers as the battle over immigration roiled the nation.s At the US-Mexico border.
The practice, often called “metering,” is no longer used by Democratic and Republican administrations alike to control the number of people who can apply for asylum each day. But the Trump administration wants to make it available, calling the policy “an important tool to address border surges.”
The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that requires the government to process claims once someone arrives at a port of entry.
Immigrant rights groups and asylum seekers who challenge the policy say the government uses it to expel desperate people., even if there are sufficient staffing and other resources to deal with them.
The Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog agency said in a 2020 report that some Border Patrol agents routinely told migrants they could not process them, regardless of a port’s actual capacity or capacity.
“This case was never about capacity,” said Nicole Elizabeth Ramos of the immigrant rights group Al Otro Lado, who helped file the first class action lawsuit in 2017. “It was about cutting off access to groups of people that the government, especially the president and his administration, deemed undesirable.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection says it needs flexibility to manage a variety of challenges, including interdicting drug trafficking and facilitating lawful trade and travel.
Can the US legally turn back asylum seekers?
To be granted asylum, which can take years, applicants must prove they faced persecution on the basis of one of five protected grounds: race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1986 allows anyone “physically present in or arriving in the United States” to apply for asylum.
The San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said the best way to interpret “arrival” is that it does not mean the same thing as “physically present,” which would make it redundant.
Rather, the term “includes people who encounter officials at the border, no matter which side of the border they stand,” the divided panel of judges said.
Otherwise, the court said, the law provides incentives for immigrants to try to avoid crossing the border, which Congress likely did not intend.
The Justice Department says the interpretation contradicts the plain text of the law.
“The ordinary meaning of ‘arrival’ refers to entering a designated place, rather than merely approaching it,” the government said in its appeal.
Border policies adopted by past administrations
The practice of not letting asylum seekers pass through checkpoints became a regular practice during the Obama administration, when Border Patrol agents began turning away hundreds of Haitian asylum seekers at California ports of entry.
Customs and Border Protection agents can prevent illegal immigrants from physically setting foot on U.S. soil if they determine the border crossing is too crowded.
The policy was formalized during the first Trump administration, and the Biden administration lifted the policy but made exceptions.
As a result, asylum seekers lived for months in makeshift camps on the Mexican side of the border without reliable food, shelter or security, immigrant rights groups say.
Religious groups support immigrants
Their lawsuit is supported by the Catholic Church and other religious groups.
“Every major faith tradition has a core value of protecting the stranger,” said Liz Theoharis, executive director of the Kairos Center for Religion, Rights and Social Justice. “For Christians like me, protecting and welcoming immigrants is one of Jesus’ first and most powerful teachings.”
But Eric Wessan, a top appellate lawyer with the Iowa Attorney General’s Office, said the justices likely agreed to take the case because they believe the appellate court misread the law.
“As a matter of text, it is really hard to believe that our Supreme Court would interpret ‘within the United States’ to include people who are stopped outside the United States and outside its borders,” he said.
