Supreme Court Rules Asylum Seekers Can Be Turned Away Before They Set Foot on U.S. Soil

In a second 6-3 immigration ruling issued June 25, 2026, the Supreme Court held in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado that noncitizens stopped at a U.S.-Mexico port of entry before physically crossing onto U.S. soil have not yet “arrived in the United States” under federal asylum law and therefore cannot invoke the statutory right to request protection [1]. The decision reverses a Ninth Circuit ruling and revives the legal foundation for “metering” — a border management practice that limits the number of asylum seekers processed each day by having officers physically prevent additional migrants from entering U.S. territory once daily capacity is reached [2, 3]. The case was brought by Al Otro Lado, Inc., a California-based immigration nonprofit, alongside 13 asylum seekers in southern California, in a class action originally filed in 2017; the Biden administration rescinded metering in November 2021, and the ruling now clears the way for the Trump administration to reimpose it [3]. Justice Alito again wrote for the majority. Justice Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, warning the decision undermines decades of U.S. asylum practice and risks leaving vulnerable people stranded in dangerous conditions [1, 4].

Why It Sucks:

Conservatives / Border Security Advocates

• Metering manages inflow but cannot fix the underlying backlog. Even with authority to cap daily processing, the immigration court backlog exceeds three million pending cases; limiting daily entry slows the queue at the front door without resolving the years-long wait time on the other side, meaning the asylum system remains functionally overwhelmed regardless [2].
• The ruling rests on a geographic technicality, not a deterrence strategy. The majority’s holding that a noncitizen standing at the border crossing has not yet “arrived” is a formalism; in practice, migrants who are metered out will continue to wait in Mexican border towns or seek entry between ports, shifting rather than reducing the security and humanitarian complications [3].
• Metering pushes the crisis onto Mexican border cities, not out of existence. Capping daily processing doesn’t stop migration — it creates extended encampments on the Mexican side, where migrants waiting weeks or months have historically been targeted by cartel exploitation and violence, creating secondary crises that U.S. enforcement cannot control [2, 3].

Asylum Seekers / Human Rights Advocates

• The ruling extinguishes the right to asylum before it can ever be invoked. Both U.S. and international law guarantee asylum seekers the ability to request protection upon arrival at a U.S. border; the court’s holding that someone standing at a port of entry hasn’t legally “arrived” nullifies that right through geographic reasoning rather than substantive law [1, 4].
• Metering stranded vulnerable people in some of the world’s most dangerous cities. When metering was previously in effect, migrants placed on waitlists were left in Mexican border cities — among the highest-homicide urban areas globally — for weeks or months with no legal protection and no access to U.S. consular services [4].
• The decision conflicts with U.S. obligations under the 1967 Refugee Protocol. The United States is a signatory to international refugee law frameworks prohibiting “refoulement” — the return of persons to conditions of danger — and advocates argue that physically blocking asylum seekers from reaching a processing point violates those treaty commitments [1, 4].

International Law Scholars / Diplomatic Observers

• The ruling creates a direct collision with treaty obligations. The U.S. cannot simultaneously maintain its Refugee Protocol commitments and implement a policy that prevents protocol-protected persons from accessing the procedure the treaty guarantees; this tension will generate future litigation in international forums and complicate diplomatic relationships [3, 4].
• Allied governments will now cite this ruling to justify their own border closures. The United States has historically used diplomatic leverage to push other countries to process asylum seekers; the ruling hands governments worldwide a SCOTUS precedent for turning people back at borders and calling it legally compliant, undermining U.S. moral authority on refugee issues [1].
• Three dissenting justices undermine the claim of settled law. The three liberal justices, citing statutory text and established treaty interpretation, found the majority’s geographic reasoning unpersuasive on its own terms — meaning the ruling reflects a contested five-justice coalition, not a legal consensus, and will drive sustained legislative and litigation pressure [1, 3].

Sources & Citations:

[1] CNN: Supreme Court gives Trump major wins on two immigration cases
[2] NOTUS: Supreme Court Greenlights Turning Away Asylum-Seekers at the Border
[3] Faegre Drinker: Supreme Court Decides Mullin v. Al Otro Lado
[4] American Immigration Council: Supreme Court Allows Trump to Strip TPS, Turn Away Asylum Seekers at the Border