Right-Wing Supreme Court Rules in Trump’s Favor in 2 Anti-Immigration Cases

The conservative-controlled U.S. Supreme Court rendered two anti-immigration decisions on Thursday, allowing the Trump administration to turn away asylum seekers at the border and stripping hundreds of thousands of people of temporary protected status.

In a case titled Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, the court sided with a Trump administration policy to turn away asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border in order to prevent them from formally making asylum claims inside the country.

Lower courts had previously determined that the definition of “arrival” to the U.S. for asylum seekers shouldn’t depend on actually entering the country — and that immigration officers can’t stop people from filing asylum claims simply by preventing them from stepping one foot over the border. But in a 6-3 ruling along ideological lines, the conservative majority found that such tactics were lawful.

“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,” .

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissenting opinion, finding that it was inappropriate for the Supreme Court to allow the executive branch to “circumvent all these mandatory procedures” governing asylum rules “by having U. S. immigration officers stand at the border and physically block noncitizens from setting a foot onto U. S. soil.”

“The majority ignores the statutory context and history, not to mention the longstanding position of the Executive Branch, all of which show that any noncitizen arriving at our doorstep and seeking admission must be inspected and allowed to apply for asylum, regardless of whether her foot has crossed the threshold,” .

The associate justice added:

The consequences of today’s decision are predictable. More people will die. More people will attempt to cross the border illegally, and some will make it while others will not. More people will be forced to walk along the U. S.-Mexico border in dangerous conditions, trying to find a port that will inspect them. More people will turn back and be subjected to violence because of something they cannot or should not have to change about themselves, such as their race, religion, nationality, or political opinion.

In a rare but not unprecedented move, Sotomayor read her dissent out loud, delaying the announcement of the ruling in the subsequent case. Usually, only the majority opinion is read out loud during the release of Supreme Court opinions; the decision of dissenters to read their findings out loud represents a more forceful protestation of the other side’s conclusions.

Alito reportedly responded to Sotomayor during her reading, accusing her of “blindsiding” him, according to witnesses in the proceedings. Responding to a justice’s reading of an opinion is also uncommon.

Rebecca Cassler, senior litigation attorney for the American Immigration Council, blasted the majority’s opinion.

“Today’s decision rejects the government’s legal responsibility to inspect and process those seeking asylum, a legal responsibility Congress put in place as a direct response to the horrors of World War II,” Cassler said, adding:

The ruling effectively overturns the law requiring asylum access at the border and squanders the United States’ once-renowned reputation as a beacon of hope for those seeking safety.

Also on Thursday, the Supreme Court decided a case titled Mullin v. Doe, which centered on the process by which the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security determines whether to terminate the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of certain groups in the United States.

Former DHS head Kristi Noem sought to end TPS status for around 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians in the U.S., concluding that those two groups’ home countries no longer met the standards required — even though both Haiti and Syria are on the State Department’s “do not travel” list of countries.

Read more Poll: Two-Thirds of Voters Say Climate Crisis Is Causing Utility Bills to Go Up

Lower courts found that Noem failed to follow the correct procedural process for changing those TPS designations, and that she apparently did so merely on a whim. Arguments against Noem’s move also centered on her and President Donald Trump’s racist comments about migrants protected under such orders.

In one of her social media posts,for example, Noem recommended banning migrants from multiple countries, including Haiti, claiming those seeking to come to the U.S. were “killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”

“WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE,” Noem added in that post.

Despite Noem’s racist rhetoric and her failure to adhere to procedure, Alito, , claimed that TPS statutes are barred from any kind of judicial review, except for when constitutional matters arise.

The prohibition of such reviews, he wrote, “is clear, and its plain meaning is very broad.”

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the dissent, vehemently disagreed that the statutes prevented any kind of review from the judicial branch.

“The law prevents the program from ending as it likely did here — without the required consultations about country conditions and, as to Haiti, with impermissible race-based considerations tainting the decision,” .

Kagan noted that litigants in the case “ask for only one thing: that they may stay in this country while they continue to litigate their claims.”

“They are entitled to that relief, and should not instead be consigned to devastating, and indeed life-threatening, injury,” Kagan added, stating that the plaintiffs in the case “deserve better than today’s decision.”

In a statement shared with Truthout, Jill Habig, CEO and founder of Public Rights Project, said the Supreme Court ruling “puts hundreds of thousands of people at risk.”

“Families will be separated, local economies will take a hit, and people will be forced back to countries in the grip of violence, instability and humanitarian collapse,” Habig added. “The human cost will be felt all across America.”

FWD.us, a policy group that promotes immigration reform, also reacted to the ruling.

“This is an awful harbinger for what we expect this administration to try to do for other TPS designations,” the organization’s president Todd Schulte said in a statement shared with Truthout.

Schulte called for immediate action to respond to a pending crisis:

President Trump is responsible for the devastating consequences of this decision, but Congress has the ability to reverse it. They should do so immediately, by passing a permanent pathway to citizenship for TPS holders.

Read more Caving to Trump, 2 Republicans Change Their Votes on Iran War Powers Resolution