Supreme Court allows Trump to restrict asylum seekers at border

The Supreme Court has ruled that migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border are not entitled to apply for asylum until they set foot in the country. The 6-3 ruling will allow President Donald Trump, a Republican, to revive a policy first used in 2016, but rescinded in 2021 under the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden. Under federal law, a migrant who "arrives" in the US may apply for asylum, which the Trump administration had argued ruled out those stopped on the Mexican side of the border. In a separate ruling, the top court ruled that the Trump administration can strip more than 356,000 Syrian and Haitian immigrants of temporary protections that allows them to stay in the US. Justice Alito delivered the opinion of the court on Thursday, calling the case "straightforward". "In ordinary speech, no one would say that a person 'arrives in' a place . . . before the person enters that place," he said in his opinion. The decision in Noem v Al Otro Lado means the Trump administration has won its appeal against a lower court ruling that found the asylum turn-back policy was unlawful. The policy is called "metering" because US immigration authorities can use it to limit the number of asylum seekers allowed to request protection each day on the grounds that they are too overburdened to process additional claims. …