A divided Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a significant immigration win Thursday, with six justices agreeing that border officials may physically block asylum seekers from setting foot on U.S. soil — a practice known as "metering" — without triggering the legal protections that kick in once someone arrives on American soil. The 6-3 ruling breathes new life into a policy that lower courts had struck down repeatedly since it was first deployed during Trump's initial term.
The case traces its origins to a 2017 lawsuit brought by Al Otro Lado, a legal and humanitarian organization, along with a group of asylum seekers who challenged the government's practice of stationing agents at the border line itself to physically prevent migrants from reaching ports of entry. Instead of being allowed to present themselves and request protection — a right enshrined in U.S. law — those migrants were turned away and left to wait in dangerous encampments or temporary shelters on the Mexican side, their names placed on lists controlled by Mexican officials. Desperate waits drove some to attempt perilous crossings through the Rio Grande or the Sonoran desert.
Justice Samuel Alito authored the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. The crux of Alito's reasoning was linguistic: because migrants are stopped before physically crossing into the United States, they cannot be said to have "arrived in" the country as federal immigration law requires. "In ordinary speech, no one would say that a person 'arrives in' a place … before the person enters that place," Alito wrote.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor led the dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, producing a 35-page opinion — nearly double the length of Alito's majority. Sotomayor called the court's reading "illogical," accusing the majority of harboring "a fixation on a single word: 'in.'" The consequences, she warned, would be severe: the ruling empowers the government to sidestep asylum protections by simply refusing entry at ports with plenty of capacity to process arrivals — even, she wrote, when "the asylum seeker is certain to be persecuted, or killed, if she is turned away."
The Biden administration had ended the metering practice in 2021, but after Donald Trump's return to the White House, his team petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn the lower-court rulings that had kept the policy on ice. Thursday's decision clears the way for its reinstatement, though the practice is not currently being enforced at the border.
Advocates warned the ruling could trigger another humanitarian emergency if the policy is revived. Erika Pinheiro, Al Otro Lado's executive director, said: "In a world of increasing conflict and climate disaster, this hardening of borders to keep out the most vulnerable is sure to result in many more lives lost." Rebecca Cassler, a senior litigation attorney at the American Immigration Council, was equally blunt: "Cruelty is not a substitute for real solutions. Blocking people from seeking asylum at official ports of entry will do nothing to fix our broken immigration system; it only makes things more chaotic and dangerous for vulnerable families."
Beyond the metering question, the Trump administration has separately pushed immigration courts to summarily dismiss asylum claims and has escalated the practice of sending migrants to third countries where they have no prior ties. Notably, the roots of metering stretch back further than Trump — the Obama administration first experimented with throttling migrant flows at the southern border as asylum claims surged and visa backlogs grew.
Informational content only, not legal advice. Consult a licensed immigration attorney.