The US Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump two sweeping wins on immigration. The rulings were both split 6-3 along ideological lines. They strengthen the administration’s authority on who can enter and who can stay in the country.
Donald Trump scores major victory in immigration case
In back-to-back rulings on Thursday, the Supreme Court cleared the way for Donald Trump’s administration to strip legal protections from roughly 1.3 million immigrants and to turn away asylum seekers before they set foot on US soil. Both decisions split 6-3 along ideological lines, with the court’s conservative majority siding with the administration.
The first ruling centres on Temporary Protected Status (TPS) — a legal protection that allows migrants from war-torn or disaster-hit countries to live and work in the United States. The court, in Mullin v. Doe, overturned lower-court orders that had blocked the administration from ending TPS for hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian migrants.
Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito held that courts do not have the authority to second-guess the government’s TPS decisions. The court also rejected claims that revoking Haitian protections was driven by racial bias. The decision affects approximately 1.3 million immigrants from 17 countries. Many of them have lived in the United States for years.
In the second ruling, the court backed the administration’s policy of stationing border agents at the physical US-Mexico border line. It is to prevent migrants from crossing into the US territory. The court found that migrants are not entitled to apply for asylum until they physically enter the country. Justice Sonia Sotomayor took the rare step of reading her dissent aloud from the bench.
The rulings add to a growing list of Supreme Court wins for Trump’s immigration case strategy. Earlier this week, the court also cleared the way for the administration to deny entry to green-card holders. The high court is expected to rule within days on birthright citizenship. It’s the principle that nearly everyone born in the US is automatically a citizen.
(Source: The Washington Post)
