The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration two major immigration-related victories, ruling that officials can turn away migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border and that the administration may cancel temporary humanitarian protections for Haitian and Syrian refugees lawfully residing in the United States.
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The rulings were among several major cases decided Thursday as the court races toward the end of its current term. However, it is still preparing rulings on issues including whether President Donald Trump had the legal authority to abolish so-called birthright citizenship and whether he can fire officials from independent federal agencies without cause.
In the asylum case, the court said the administration could continue its policy of preventing migrants from crossing into the U.S. to seek protection from persecution in their home countries. The court was split 6-3, with conservative justices on one side and the liberal wing, made up of Democratic appointees, on the other.
“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,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority. “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.”
In a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized Alito’s reasoning as too narrow.
“The Court’s illogical interpretation is driven almost entirely by a fixation on a single word: ‘in,’” Sotomayor wrote. “Words, however, must be read in context and with attention to how they fit into the statute as a whole. The majority ignores the statutory context and history, not to mention the longstanding position of the Executive Branch, all of which show that any noncitizen arriving at our doorstep and seeking admission must be inspected and allowed to apply for asylum, regardless of whether her foot has crossed the threshold.”
Trump pledged to end Temporary Protected Status
The 6-3 ruling on Haitian and Syrian refugees could allow the government to deport hundreds of thousands of people who have legally lived in the U.S. for years during periods of turmoil in their home countries. It might also allow the expulsion of refugees from other countries that the U.S. deems unsafe.
At issue is the Temporary Protected Status program, created by Congress in 1990 to allow people to legally enter the U.S. from countries that have experienced widespread natural disasters or political violence.
Trump pledged during his 2024 campaign to end TPS for Haitians, claiming falsely that immigrants from the Caribbean country who settled in Springfield, Ohio, had killed and eaten their neighbors’ cats and dogs.
When Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem moved to revoke TPS last year, critics said she based the decision on the racial makeup of Haiti’s population.
“But, ironically,” Alito wrote in the majority opinion, “one of respondents’ other arguments undermines the equal protection claim by offering a strong, race-neutral explanation for Haiti’s termination: namely, that the current administration, which has terminated every TPS designation that has come up for renewal, simply opposes the TPS program, at least as it has been implemented in the past.”
In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan said the refugees should be allowed to remain in the U.S. while specific lawsuits challenging the end of TPS work their way through lower courts.
“There is no dispute,” Kagan wrote, “that the plaintiffs will suffer irreparable harm” unless they are allowed to stay in the U.S. Under the majority’s ruling, she said, “they may instead be put on the next plane.”
Roundup cancer cases blocked
In another case decided Thursday, the court ruled that thousands of civil cases against Monsanto alleging that its weedkiller, Roundup, needs a warning label stating it could cause cancer will not be able to proceed.
The 7-2 decision in favor of Monsanto, owned by Bayer, relied on technical issues, concluding that a federal law does not allow cancer victims and survivors to sue Monsanto in state courts, where most of the suits were filed.
The majority opinion, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, said the plaintiff, a Missouri man named John Durnell, contended that both state and federal laws require manufacturers to issue health warnings about dangerous products.
“But that argument,” Kavanaugh wrote, “operates at far too high a level of generality” and disregards federal labeling provisions.
Monsanto denies that Roundup causes cancer. However, the weedkiller is banned in some nations, such as Brazil, Austria, Australia and Bahrain.
Hawaii gun restrictions struck down
The court struck down a 2023 Hawaii law that prohibited people from carrying handguns in most public spaces and on private property without the owner’s permission.
“This law departs sharply from the standard common-law rule on access to private property held open to the public,” Alito wrote in the court’s 6-3 majority opinion. “Under that rule, everyone, including those lawfully carrying firearms, may enter unless expressly prohibited from doing so. By contrast, under the new Hawaii law, no one carrying a firearm may enter without the property owner’s express authorization.”
“This regime hobbles what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives,” Alito wrote.
In a dissent, Kagan described the Hawaii statute as “a modern-day analogue of colonial and founding era laws that similarly prohibited carrying firearms onto private property without the owner’s affirmative consent.”
Despite her argument, the majority ruled that the Hawaii law did not meet its standard, which requires lower courts to examine gun restrictions and bans in the context of historic laws.
Last week, for example, the court ruled that a Texas man could not be prosecuted under a federal law that barred drug users from possessing firearms. The court said the law did not have a historic basis and was therefore unconstitutional.
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