{"id":2583546,"date":"2026-03-25T08:01:02","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T12:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/supreme-court-weighs-asylum-policy-critical-to-combatting-border-surges\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T08:03:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T12:03:32","slug":"supreme-court-weighs-asylum-policy-critical-to-combatting-border-surges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/supreme-court-weighs-asylum-policy-critical-to-combatting-border-surges\/","title":{"rendered":"SCOTUS Weighs Asylum Policy Critical To Tackling Border Surges"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fsupreme-court-weighs-asylum-policy-critical-to-combatting-border-surges%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2583546&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The article reports on the Supreme Court\u2019s consideration of the legality of the border \u201cmetering\u201d policy, a practice used to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/kavanaugh-concerned-asylum-policy-gives-illegal-immigrants-an-advantage\/\" title=\"Kavanaugh concerned ... policy gives illegal immigrants an advantage\">curb migrant surges<\/a> by temporarily preventing people without <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/blinken-not-aware-of-any-hostage-like-situation-in-afghanistan-assured-by-taliban-americans-being-allowed-to-leave\/\" title=\"Blinken \u2018Not Aware\u2019 Of Any \u2018Hostage-Like Situation\u2019 In Afghanistan, \u2018Assured\u2019 By Taliban Americans Being Allowed To Leave\">valid travel documents<\/a> from crossing the border when ports of entry are overwhelmed. The case, Noem v. Alt Otro Lado, stems from a 2016-2018 policy described by the Trump administration as turning away asylum seekers at the border until resources allow processing. The 9th Circuit ruled that the policy violates the Immigration and Nationality Act by denying asylum seekers the chance to apply \u201carrives in the United States,\u201d which the court read as including border encounters regardless of which side of the border they stand on. The government argues that \u201carrives in the United states\u201d requires actual entry into the country and is consistent with statutory text and precedent.<\/p>\n<p>During oral arguments, Associate Justices including Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson pressed the government, with Sotomayor challenging the line of questioning and Jackson warning about the practical effects if the statute requires people to break the law to seek asylum. Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Samuel Alito challenged the opposing side\u2019s interpretation, while Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch questioned Corkran\u2019s reading. The justices also discussed whether the case is moot sence metering is not currently in use.A decision is not expected until later in the court\u2019s 2025-2026 term. The piece is by Shawn Fleetwood of The Federalist.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The U.S. Supreme Court is considering the legality of a border policy that&rsquo;s played a key role in immigration officials&rsquo; efforts to stave off migrant surges at the U.S.-Mexico border. <\/p>\n<p>The justices heard <a href=\"https:\/\/www.c-span.org\/program\/public-affairs-event\/supreme-court-hears-asylum-case\/675664\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">oral arguments<\/a> on Tuesday in <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/docket\/docketfiles\/html\/public\/25-5.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Noem v. Alt Otro Lado<\/a><\/em>, which deals with a challenge to border officials&rsquo; now-inactive &ldquo;metering&rdquo; policy. As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/DocketPDF\/25\/25-5\/390940\/20260106152523401_25-5AlOtroLadoPetBr.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">described<\/a> by the Trump administration, the practice &mdash; which was initially <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/09\/30\/the-federalists-guide-to-the-2025-supreme-court-term\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">implemented<\/a> in 2016 and later formalized in 2018 &mdash; involves &ldquo;port officials &hellip; stand[ing] along the border and temporarily prevent[ing] aliens without valid travel documents from crossing into the United States, generally telling them that they would need to return to the port of entry later, when there were sufficient resources to process them.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The Trump administration appealed the case to SCOTUS after the 9th Circuit Court <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/DocketPDF\/25\/25-5\/390940\/20260106152523401_25-5AlOtroLadoPetBr.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">held<\/a> that the policy violates provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act that allow for an individual who &ldquo;arrives in the United States&rdquo; to apply for asylum and undergo inspection by an immigration official. The lower court argued that &ldquo;the phrase &lsquo;arrives in the United States&rsquo; encompasses those who encounter officials at the border, whichever side of the border they are standing on.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General Vivek Suri rejected that conclusion during Tuesday&rsquo;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/oral_arguments\/argument_transcripts\/2025\/25-5_4gd5.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">arguments<\/a>. He contended that such a theory &ldquo;is wrong for the simple reason that it defies the statutory text.&rdquo; <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t &lsquo;arrive in the United States&rsquo; while still in Mexico. That should be the end of this case,&rdquo; Suri said, while also citing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oyez.org\/cases\/1992\/92-344\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">SCOTUS precedent<\/a> he argued supports the government&rsquo;s position. <\/p>\n<p>The administration&rsquo;s <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >attorney faced aggressive pushback<\/a> from the court&rsquo;s Democrat appointees &mdash; more specifically, Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. <\/p>\n<p>Sotomayor took issue with Suri&rsquo;s response to a question from Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, in which he argued that metering does not &ldquo;implicate&rdquo; America&rsquo;s treaty obligations as it relates to refugees and asylum issues. The Obama appointee&rsquo;s repeated unwillingness to allow Suri to answer her long-winded questions prompted Chief Justice John Roberts to interject and ask that he finish his response.<\/p>\n<p>In her questioning, Jackson expressed concern about the &ldquo;practical implications&rdquo; of the administration&rsquo;s position &ldquo;insofar as it suggests that a Congress that was authorizing asylum would be requiring people to break the law in order to obtain it&rdquo; (i.e. that someone would have to enter the U.S. illegally before they could apply for asylum under the statute). She also seemingly suggested that the case should be deemed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/wex\/moot\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">moot<\/a> since metering isn&rsquo;t currently being used.<\/p>\n<p>Suri later got the chance to fully address Jackson&rsquo;s first point when pressed on the issue by Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The assistant to the solicitor general noted how metering only temporarily turns away an asylum seeker when a port of entry is overcrowded on a given day, and that &ldquo;Congress could reasonably determine that the United States has greater responsibilities to aliens in the United States than to aliens in Mexico.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>(Kavanaugh would later pose a counter to Jackson&rsquo;s framing in a question to the opposing side.) <\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the court&rsquo;s Republican appointees had their fair share of challenging questions for Alt Otro Lado&rsquo;s attorney, Kelsi Corkran. <\/p>\n<p>Citing a prior point made by Roberts about the fact that the statute uses the language &ldquo;arrives in&rdquo; instead of &ldquo;arriving,&rdquo; Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted how &ldquo;&lsquo;arriving&rsquo; sounds more &lsquo;in the process of,&#8217;&rdquo; and &ldquo;&lsquo;arrives in&rsquo; sounds more like you&rsquo;ve reached your destination.&rdquo; She then pressed Corkran on how, under her theory, one is supposed to know &ldquo;when the person is close enough that we could say &hellip; they have &lsquo;arrives in&rsquo; or &lsquo;arrived in&rsquo; the destination?&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;What if there&rsquo;s a queue and they&rsquo;re far back, or what if they arrive not at a port of entry? How close do you have to be to the border?&rdquo; Barrett asked. &ldquo;If it&rsquo;s not crossing the physical border, what is the magic thing or the dispositive thing that we&rsquo;re looking for where we say, &lsquo;Ah, now that person we can say &lsquo;arrives in&rsquo; the United States&rsquo;?&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Conflicting rhetoric about the statute&rsquo;s specific text is also an issue Associate Justice Samuel picked up on. In his questioning, the Bush 43 appointee chastised Corkran, Sotomayor, and Jackson for misrepresenting what the law actually says. <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;It will be interesting to read the actual transcript of the oral argument because I believe that both you, and Justice Sotomayor and Justice Jackson, on several occasions, have used the phrase &lsquo;arriving at.&rsquo; &hellip; But that&rsquo;s not the term that is in the statute. Do you think that there is no difference between &lsquo;arriving at&rsquo; a location and &lsquo;arriving in&rsquo; the location?&rdquo; Alito asked Corkran. <\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><span><\/p>\n<blockquote data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Justice Alito rips a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/biden-taps-sanctuary-city-supporter-to-oversee-ice-prosecutions\/\" title=\"Biden Taps \u2018Sanctuary City\u2019 Supporter To Oversee ICE Prosecutions\">left-wing attorney<\/a> and Justices Sotomayor and Jackson for misrepresenting what the asylum statute at issue actually says. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FDRLST?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@FDRLST<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/3UoT05a9US\">pic.twitter.com\/3UoT05a9US<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Shawn Fleetwood (@ShawnFleetwood) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ShawnFleetwood\/status\/2036486286685438073?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 24, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/span> <\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Kavanaugh suggested that the debate about &ldquo;trying to figure out at the threshold on the [border] line&rdquo; is &ldquo;artificial&rdquo; &ldquo;because wherever the line is, the government&rsquo;s presumably going to stop you on the other side of that line and prevent you from getting to wherever the line is.&rdquo; He added that it seems the &ldquo;bigger question&rdquo; at issue is whether the government can &ldquo;physically stop people before they get to whatever that line is no matter how we define it.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Roberts and Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch also appeared skeptical of Corkran&rsquo;s arguments. <\/p>\n<p>A decision in <em>Noem v. Alt Otro Lado<\/em> is not expected until later in the court&rsquo;s 2025-2026 term, which is slated to end in late June. <\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics and RealClearHealth. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SCOTUS weighs legality of metering border policy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":539,"featured_media":2583547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/U.S.-border.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33651],"tags":[76473,76491,70100,6994,70735],"class_list":["post-2583546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-western-journal","tag-asylum-policy-2","tag-border-surges","tag-immigration-policy-2","tag-scotus","tag-supreme-court-2"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/U.S.-border.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/539"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2583546"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2583550,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583546\/revisions\/2583550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2583547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2583546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2583546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2583546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}