Supreme Court agrees to decide Trump's asylum ban at the border

The justices took up the case Friday, agreeing to decide whether the administration actually has the power to bar asylum claims at the southern border. A federal judge already ruled the policy unlawful, but it has kept running while the litigation plays out. The final word lands before the end of June.

Trump issued the ban through a Jan. 20, 2025 proclamation declaring an 'invasion' at the southern border. One provision lets anyone who crosses without the required paperwork be removed immediately, with no shot at claiming asylum. Immigration hardliners have long argued that people entering illegally file asylum claims just to stay in the country while their cases grind through the system, valid claims or not.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the court the president holds sweeping authority to bar entry, citing federal immigration laws and constitutional powers. The policy 'rests on a commonsense understanding of the President's inherent and delegated powers to exclude aliens,' Sauer wrote, pointing to a law letting the president restrict entry when he deems it 'detrimental to the interests of the United States.'

On the other side: 13 unnamed plaintiffs plus three immigration groups — the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project. Their ACLU lawyers say the ban tramples the asylum process Congress built into the Immigration and Nationality Act, which lets immigrants argue they face a 'credible fear' of torture or persecution back home. The president 'may not invent by fiat a new removal system that eviscerates the protections Congress mandated by statute,' they wrote.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss, based in Washington, ruled against the administration in July 2025, finding nothing in the Constitution or immigration law 'grants the president ... authority to replace the comprehensive rules and procedures set forth in the INA.' The D.C. Circuit upheld that ruling in April, pushing the administration to ask the Supreme Court to step in.

Asylum is the third major Trump immigration case on the docket. The others cover the administration's push to deport immigrants to 'third countries' they have no ties to, and its attempt to detain thousands of people in deportation proceedings indefinitely instead of releasing them while cases are adjudicated. In June the court backed the president's border authority in a related ruling, and also blocked his executive order limiting birthright citizenship. Back in his first term, the justices upheld his travel ban on people from mostly Muslim-majority countries.