The Supreme Court agreed to review a lower court ruling that struck down the Trump administration's suspension of asylum access at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide whether the Trump administration can suspend access to asylum for immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. The justices will review a ruling by a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., that struck down the policy as an overreach by the government.
The case, Mullin v. Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, stems from a Jan. 20, 2025, proclamation by President Donald Trump declaring that "an invasion is ongoing at the southern border" and suspending the entry of noncitizens "engaged in the invasion." Trump also indicated that such noncitizens could no longer seek protections, such as asylum, that would allow them to remain in the country.
The Department of Homeland Security issued guidance barring any noncitizens from applying for asylum. The guidance also indicated that anyone who entered the country despite Trump’s suspension of entry would be quickly removed without some of the procedural protections provided by law.
The challengers are a group of 13 individuals who say they have been persecuted or tortured in their home countries, as well as three immigration-related nonprofits. They sought to file a class-action lawsuit in federal court in Washington, arguing that both the proclamation and the guidance violate federal immigration law.
U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss recognized a class of challengers, made up of immigrants who are or would be subject to Trump’s proclamation. He concluded that the DHS guidance was unlawful and threw it out, and he barred DHS officials from implementing those actions under the proclamation.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit initially paused part of Moss’ order, but a different panel later largely upheld it on the merits. Judge J. Michelle Childs, joined by Judge Cornelia Pillard, wrote that the "text, structure, and history" of federal immigration law "make clear that in supplying power to suspend entry by Presidential proclamation, Congress did not intend to grant the Executive the expansive removal authority it asserts. The Proclamation and Guidance are thus unlawful to the extent that they circumvent … removal procedures and cast aside federal laws affording individuals the right to apply and be considered for asylum or withholding of removal protections," a more limited form of protection from deportation.
Judge Justin Walker dissented in part. Although he contended that Trump has the discretion to deny all asylum applications and therefore can dispense with the application process altogether on the ground that he would deny the applications, he agreed with the majority that the government "cannot remove aliens to countries where they will be persecuted, and the Proclamation and Guidance cannot strip them of mandatory procedures that protect against that removal."
The D.C. Circuit agreed to keep its ruling on hold while the government appeals, allowing the government to maintain the asylum restrictions.
Contending that the U.S.-Mexico border "had become overwhelmed by an ungovernable influx of millions of aliens, creating chaotic conditions that criminal and terrorist organizations exploited to threaten our national security," the Trump administration came to the Supreme Court in August, asking the justices to weigh in. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices that "suspending the illegal entry of aliens and precluding their access to asylum" is "[t]he most important and effective pieces of the President’s response."
Trump’s proclamation, Sauer continued, "rests on a commonsense understanding of the President’s inherent and delegated powers to exclude aliens." Therefore, he said, Trump "acted well within his authority in preemptively indicating that asylum applications filed by aliens who violate the proclamation’s entry suspension would be denied—and in effectuating that discretionary policy choice by directing that the government need not accept futile asylum applications from those aliens."
Sauer also told the court that the lower courts did not have the power to apply their order to a whole class of challengers. Federal immigration law, he argued, expressly bars lower courts from issuing orders that require federal officials to enforce or implement specified provisions of federal immigration law –including those "allowing aliens to assert an asylum claim … and obtain a hearing before being subject to expedited removal."
And in any event, Sauer continued, the class of challengers also violates the rules governing class actions because it "sweeps in aliens who are currently overseas and have no imminent plans to enter the United States (much less enter illegally)." Those noncitizens, he wrote, have not been injured and therefore cannot be part of the class; they "will become future class members here only if they choose to illegally enter the county."
The challengers urged the justices to deny review, telling them that the D.C. Circuit’s ruling "correctly held that the President may not invent by fiat a new removal system that eviscerates the protections Congress mandated by statute." They also pushed back against the administration’s suggestion that the proclamation and guidance were intended to address an "unprecedented crisis," countering that "the facts say otherwise. By January 2025, before the Proclamation took effect, border apprehensions had returned to historically routine levels, down over 90 percent from their peak. If the Executive Branch nonetheless believes it needs new tools to manage the border, Congress must provide them."
The challengers also rejected the administration’s suggestion that the lower courts could not have broadly barred the Trump administration from implementing the proclamation and guidance. The law stripping the lower courts of the power "to enjoin or restrain the operation of" some federal immigration laws does not apply here, they said, because Trump’s proclamation relies on other laws that are not implicated by that bar.
The court agreed to consider the legality of Trump’s proclamation and the guidance, as well as Moss’ power to enter an order providing broad relief, but it turned down the government’s request to weigh in on whether the class violates the rules governing class actions.
The court also agreed to hear Robinhood Markets v. Sodha on Friday, involving whether a California-based financial-services company violated federal securities laws when it failed to disclose some interim financial data as part of its initial public offering in July 2021, although that data was not scheduled to be reported until August of that year. In a lawsuit brought by investors, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled against the company, prompting it to come to the Supreme Court in February.
The company asked the justices to decide two questions, involving the effect of the company’s failure to disclose interim financial data that investors may consider significant to their decisions on compliance with federal securities laws and regulations.
The investors asked the justices to stay out of the case, telling them that "[t]here is nothing radical … about the decision below," much less anything worthy of the Supreme Court’s intervention. Although the company "disagree[s] with the outcome," the investors said, it "do[es] not propose that this Court adopt legal rules in place of the existing standards."
In a brief filed last month at the court’s request, the Trump administration agreed with Robinhood that the court should weigh in on the first question presented by the company’s petition for review. Sauer told the justices that the 9th Circuit’s ruling "threatens significant untoward consequences."
The court on Friday agreed to decide one of the questions posed by Robinhood Markets’ petition: "[w]hether an issuer can be found liable under the misleading-omissions prong" of the law at the center of the dispute "based on a determination that the issuer failed to disclose interim financial information that is material within the meaning of" that provision, "without an additional inquiry to determine whether the omission rendered any affirmative statement misleading."
The justices will likely hear oral arguments in these cases sometime next spring.
The Supreme Court’s decision will determine the scope of presidential authority to suspend asylum access at the southern border and will affect the administration’s ability to enforce its immigration restrictions while the case proceeds.
Sources
This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.
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