(TNND) — The Supreme Court has agreed to weigh in on a case that could give the Trump administration a tool to restrict asylum claims at the border.
At question is the use of “metering,” in which officers turn back asylum seekers on the Mexico side of the border without granting a screening or hearing.
The Trump administration petitioned the high court to reverse the 9th Circuit Court decision that found metering unlawful.
The practice has been fought over in the courts for years, but multiple administrations have used it as a way to control migrant surges.
UC Davis law professor Kevin R. Johnson said the Trump administration wants the ability to use metering to restrict claims amid an overwhelmed immigration court system.
But U.S. law allows a migrant to arrive at an American port of entry and apply for an asylum hearing so they can show they have a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country based on race, political opinion, membership in a particular social group, religion or nationality.
And counsel and advocacy groups for asylum seekers say they view the government’s turnback policy as “an illegal scheme to circumvent these requirements by physically blocking asylum seekers arriving at ports of entry and preventing them from crossing the border to seek protection.”
Should people only be allowed to request asylum once they arrive in the country, not at the gates?
And is the U.S. violating its legal obligation by not even entertaining asylum claims?
Those are the questions before the justices.
“There’s several ways you can look at it,” Johnson said. “You can look at it as we are violating our laws by not allowing them to apply for asylum, because the asylum law doesn’t talk anything about metering or regulating surges. And we arguably are in violation of our international law obligations by not allowing these people to apply for any kind of relief. The other side of the coin is we were dealing with incredible numbers of people, you could call it crashing or you could call it surging our borders, and we weren’t able to process all the people applying for relief. And we try to come up with a reasonable system for regulating the numbers of people coming.”
It’s no shoo-in that someone seeking asylum will be granted asylum.
Johnson pointed to data that shows the immigration court asylum grant rate has been cut in half in the last year. Only about one in five asylum seekers were granted their request at last count.
Johnson said the justices have been willing to defer to the administration in its efforts to deal with complex policy issues, and he said they might find that metering is permissible within some limits.
If so, that’ll narrow the avenues that asylum seekers can pursue.
“And the most desperate, most afraid, are not likely to go to ports of entry, but will more likely go through other avenues, including crossing deserts, going over mountains, to try to enter the country unlawfully,” Johnson said. “And there are risks to that kind of entry, including the deaths we see every summer in the U.S.-Mexico border region.”