The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that asylum-seekers physically stopped by U.S. authorities at the border have no legal right to seek safety in the United States.The case arose from the so-called “metering” policy, which began at the tail end of then-President Barack Obama’s administration and was systematized by President Donald Trump in his first term. The court ruled 6-3 along ideological lines, with Justice Samuel Alito delivering the opinion. Under the policy, people seeking asylum in the United States by surrendering at ports of entry were turned away by the thousands. When the policy was in effect, metering led to hundreds of cases of assault, kidnap and murder of would-be asylum applicants who were turned away at the border, litigants said. The policy ended in 2024 as a result of litigation against it, but the Trump administration revived the issue last year.Now, with the Supreme Court’s blessing, the government has the power to add yet another hurdle to people attempting to legally seek refuge in the United States.The case before the high court hinged on whether someone could be considered to be “arriving” in the United States — making them eligible to claim asylum — even if they were stopped at the border by U.S. border guards. “The wisdom of the policy of metering alien arrivals at the southern border is not before us. We decide only that an alien standing in Mexico does not “arriv[e] in the United States,’” Alito wrote for the majority. “The [Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952] neither entitles such an alien to apply for asylum nor requires an immigration officer to inspect him.”Under the metering policy, guards told asylum-seekers that ports of entry had reached capacity and that they must come back another time. But without any organized system for tracking these asylum-seekers, some languished in northern Mexico, often away from their support networks and vulnerable to violence. Lower courts found that the policy was unlawful.The right to seek asylum in the United States once a person has set foot on U.S. soil — even for those who cross the border without authorization — is enshrined in federal law. But American history is marked by failures to accept refugees, most notably in 1939, when hundreds of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, traveling on the MS St. Louis, were not allowed to disembark on U.S. soil. Many later died in the Holocaust. “Informed by the suffering of the St. Louis passengers, Congress codified asylum protections at U.S. borders and created orderly procedures to assess asylum claims from people who reach a port of entry and to grant refuge to those who risk persecution if turned away,” humanitarian group HIAS wrote in an amicus brief ahead of oral arguments in Noem v. Al Otro Lado (since renamed to Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, after the confirmation of new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin).“The policy here flouts the law Congress enacted and wrongly turns back the clock to a period when people fleeing persecution were forced to face arbitrary procedures, crushing uncertainty, and prolonged sojourns in dangerous conditions in a legal no man’s land.”In addition to seeking the potential revival of metering, the Trump administration has pursued several other methods for all but eliminating migration to and asylum-seeking in the United States. On his first day back in office, for example, Trump declared an “invasion” on the southern border as a pretext for suspending asylum rights there. In April, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found Trump’s action to be unlawful.