The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a pair of 6-3 victories Thursday morning, ruling that migrants turned away at the southern border before setting foot on U.S. soil have no right to apply for asylum, and that Haitian and Syrian nationals cannot use the courts to block the revocation of their Temporary Protected Status. The twin decisions in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado and Mullin v. Doe remove two of the most significant legal obstacles to border enforcement and accelerated removals, Fox News Digital reported.
Both opinions were written by Justice Samuel Alito. Both drew dissents from the same three liberal justices. And both prompted the Department of Homeland Security to declare vindication in language that left no room for ambiguity.
DHS General Counsel James Percival told Fox News Digital that the rulings give the government “several more important tools to continue securing our borders.” On the asylum case, Percival was blunt:
“We had to go all the way to SCOTUS to vindicate the principle that an alien is not ‘in the United States’ until he is, in fact, in the United States. We have yet AGAIN been vindicated by the Supreme Court. This decision opens up an important tool to continue securing our southern border.”
The first case, Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, turned on a question that most Americans would consider common sense: Does a person “arrive in” the United States while still standing in Mexico? The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had answered yes. The Supreme Court, 6-3, said no.
Justice Alito opened his majority opinion with characteristic directness:
“This case presents a straightforward question: whether an alien who seeks to enter the United States from Mexico ‘arrives in the United States’ when he or she is still in Mexico. In the decision below, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit answered ‘yes.’ That is wrong. In ordinary speech, no one would say that a person ‘arrives in’ a place, for example, a house, a city, or a country, before the person enters that place.”
The ruling also upheld the practice known as “metering,” which caps the number of asylum applications processed at ports of entry on any given day. National Review noted that metering originated under the Obama administration in 2016, a detail that undercuts the progressive argument that the policy is a uniquely Trumpian invention. The Court’s decision means immigration officers are not required to inspect or process asylum claims from individuals who remain on the Mexican side of the border.
The Ninth Circuit’s reversal follows a familiar pattern. That court has served as the preferred venue for progressive legal challenges to immigration enforcement for years, and the Supreme Court has now overturned yet another of its expansive readings of immigration law.
Justice Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson. She argued the majority’s reasoning was overly simplistic and ignored contexts in which immigrants approaching the border are treated as “arriving.” In a rare move, Sotomayor read her dissent aloud from the bench, warning that “the consequences of today’s decision are predictable. More people will die.”
Alito responded in kind. The New York Post reported that the exchange grew tense, with Alito saying that had he known Sotomayor would deliver her dissent in full, “there’s much more I would have added” to his own comments. The public back-and-forth between the two justices underscored the depth of the ideological divide on the Court over immigration enforcement, a divide the administration has navigated repeatedly in recent terms.
The second decision, Mullin v. Doe, addressed whether Haitian and Syrian nationals holding Temporary Protected Status could obtain court orders postponing the termination of their protections while they challenged the revocation in litigation. The Court held they could not.
Justice Alito wrote that the TPS statute speaks plainly on the matter:
“The TPS statute plainly bars consideration of respondents’ non-constitutional claims. It allows ‘no [judicial review] of any determination… with respect to the… termination’ of a TPS designation.”
The practical effect is significant. Hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian nationals who had been shielded from deportation under TPS designations now face the prospect of removal, with no legal mechanism to delay the process through non-constitutional court challenges. DHS General Counsel Percival framed the ruling as a restoration of the program’s original intent:
“In our second Supreme Court win of the day, the Court vindicates DHS yet again. The T in TPS stands for TEMPORARY, yet many of these designations became de facto amnesty. This is a win for the rule of law and common sense.”
Percival’s characterization captures a frustration shared by many conservatives and immigration enforcement advocates. TPS was designed as a short-term humanitarian measure for nationals of countries hit by natural disasters, armed conflict, or other extraordinary conditions. In practice, successive administrations, particularly under Obama and Biden, extended designations for years or decades, allowing recipients to build lives in the United States with little expectation of return. The word “temporary” became, for all practical purposes, meaningless.
The Court’s ruling restores the statutory framework Congress actually wrote. If TPS is to become a permanent pathway, that decision belongs to the legislature, not to federal judges issuing rolling injunctions.
Justice Kagan led the dissent in Mullin v. Doe, raising two distinct arguments. First, she contended that Haitian TPS holders may have a constitutional claim rooted in equal protection, arguing that “racial animus” motivated the Trump administration’s decision to revoke their status. Kagan cited statements President Trump made about Haitians during the lead-up to the 2024 election, including claims about Haitians eating pets in Ohio, as well as other remarks about migrants of African descent.
Second, Kagan argued on procedural grounds that DHS failed to follow the steps required under law to properly revoke TPS for Haitians and Syrians.
Justice Alito addressed the racial animus argument directly in his majority opinion. He noted that the respondents themselves suggested the Trump administration may simply oppose TPS as a matter of policy, without regard to any particular group, an acknowledgment that, in Alito’s view, makes a racial explanation unlikely to be proven. The distinction matters. Policy disagreement is not discrimination, and the majority declined to treat it as such.
The dissent’s invocation of campaign rhetoric as evidence of unconstitutional motive is a familiar progressive legal strategy. It asks courts to look past statutory text and administrative process and instead psychoanalyze the motivations of elected officials based on political speech. The majority rejected that approach, and rightly so. If campaign statements can override statutory language, no act of Congress is safe from judicial reinterpretation.
Breitbart reported that the Court issued a third 6-3 immigration ruling on the same day, Blanche v. Muk Choi Lau, making it easier for DHS to deport green card holders convicted of crimes in the United States. Percival described all three decisions collectively as “victories for the rule of law and common sense” and said they provide “several more important tools to continue securing our borders.”
Three rulings. All 6-3. All in the administration’s favor. All on the same morning. The Court did not simply hand the White House a win, it systematically dismantled the legal architecture that progressive litigants and lower courts had built to obstruct immigration enforcement.
The Court has delivered several consequential rulings in recent terms that have reshaped the legal landscape on issues ranging from redistricting to firearms regulation. But Thursday’s immigration trio may carry the most immediate operational impact. Each ruling removes a specific legal tool that advocacy groups and sympathetic courts had used to delay or block enforcement actions at the border and within the interior.
Several questions remain. The full vote breakdowns beyond the 6-3 split have not been detailed in initial reporting. The specific number of TPS holders affected, likely in the hundreds of thousands, has not been confirmed in the decisions themselves. And the procedural arguments Kagan raised about DHS’s revocation process could surface again in future litigation, particularly if equal protection claims are pursued on remand.
The administration has faced resistance from lower courts on a range of policy fronts, and Thursday’s rulings do not eliminate the possibility of future challenges. But they do establish clear legal markers. Migrants standing in Mexico have not arrived. Temporary means temporary. And the statute means what it says.
For years, the immigration enforcement system has been tangled in litigation designed not to resolve legal questions but to delay enforcement indefinitely. Just the News characterized the asylum ruling as “a clear victory for the Trump administration’s immigration policies.” That is accurate, but it understates the broader significance. These decisions are a victory for the principle that Congress writes immigration law and the executive enforces it, and that federal courts are not a second legislature available to anyone who dislikes the outcome.
The Supreme Court has shown this term that it is willing to read statutes as written, even when the political class would prefer otherwise. Thursday’s immigration rulings are the clearest example yet.
When the law says “arrives in the United States,” it means you have to actually be here. When the law says “temporary,” it doesn’t mean forever. These should not be controversial propositions. That it took the Supreme Court to say so tells you everything about the system the rulings just corrected.
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