U.S. law allows anyone who steps foot in the United States to pursue a claim for asylum ― full stop.
So, should American border guards be able to act like linebackers at ports of entry, turning back anyone who approaches expressing a fear of returning home, and preventing those asylum claims by force?
That’s the issue coming in front of the Supreme Court on Tuesday in Noem v. Al Otro Lado, as the justices consider whether to green light an immigration policy initiated by President Barack Obama’s administration, and systematized by Donald Trump in his first term.
Under the so-called “metering” policy, migrants who arrived at ports of entry along the southern border, where historically they would have been allowed to claim a fear of persecution in their home country and begin the process of pursuing asylum in the United States, were instead turned back into Mexico regardless of the merits of their case ― without any record of their encounter, nor a date to return and try again.
The metering, or “turnback,” policy, ended during the Biden administration. A district court ruled against the policy in 2021, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals again ruled against it in 2024.
