Two cases. Two 6-3 rulings. Both written by Justice Samuel Alito. Both dropped on the same Wednesday morning. The Supreme Court just handed the Trump administration its biggest immigration victories of the term — one upholding the government's power to turn asylum seekers away at the border, the other greenlighting the termination of Temporary Protected Status for roughly 330,000 Haitians and 3,800 Syrians.
The open-borders crowd is going to need a bigger tissue box.
The first case, Noem v. Al Otro Lado, dealt with "metering" — the practice of limiting the number of asylum applicants processed at ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border. The policy was first used under Obama, then formalized during Trump's first term in 2018. A California-based immigrant rights group called Al Otro Lado sued alongside 13 asylum seekers, arguing that anyone who shows up at the border has a statutory right to apply.
Alito wasn't buying it. The majority opinion hinged on a straightforward reading of U.S. Code 1157, which grants the right to apply for asylum to an alien who "arrives in the United States." Standing in Mexico, Alito wrote, doesn't count. He put it in terms even ESPN could understand: "A running back does not arrive in the end zone when he reaches the 1-yard line."
The second ruling, Mullin v. Doe, tackled Temporary Protected Status — the program Congress created in 1990 that allows nationals from disaster- or conflict-stricken countries to live and work legally in the U.S. The Trump administration terminated TPS for Syria in September 2025 and for Haiti in November 2025. Seven Syrian nationals in the Southern District of New York and five Haitian nationals in the D.C. District Court challenged the terminations.
Alito, again writing for the majority, ruled that the secretary's TPS designation decisions are not subject to judicial review. Period. The statute says so, and the Court isn't going to pretend it doesn't.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor was not pleased. She dissented from the bench in the metering case — a dramatic move reserved for occasions when a justice wants the public to know just how angry they are. She called the majority's reading "illogical" and accused the six conservative justices of being "fixated" on the word "in." Her closing flourish: the decision "regrettably and tragically extinguishes the light of the torch of the Statue of Liberty."
Sotomayor also warned the ruling would "slam the door shut on all who are fleeing persecution" and predicted that "more people will die" as a result. Justice Elena Kagan joined the TPS dissent, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented in both cases.
Alito did something unusual after Sotomayor finished her bench dissent — he voiced a response, expressing surprise she'd read it aloud and pointing out that the metering policy had been used across two presidential administrations. Which is a polite way of saying: your guy did it too.
The immigration advocacy world reacted predictably. Todd Schulte of FWD.us, a bipartisan immigration reform group, called the TPS decision "economic self-sabotage that will rip billions out of the U.S. economy and destabilize communities nationwide." The group's own numbers put TPS holders' annual economic contribution at $5.9 billion, with $1.5 billion flowing to federal and state tax coffers. Among Haitian TPS holders alone, the workforce includes roughly 200,000 workers — 15,000 in agriculture, 13,000 nursing assistants, and 8,000 caregivers.
Those numbers are worth noting. Nobody serious argues that deporting 330,000 people is logistically simple or economically painless. But the legal question before the Court wasn't whether ending TPS is wise policy. It was whether the executive branch has the authority to do it. The answer, according to six justices, is yes — and Congress wrote the statute that way on purpose.
The metering case lands the same way. The policy existed under Obama. It existed under Trump 1.0. Lower courts blocked it. The Supreme Court just unblocked it. The border isn't a suggestion line, and showing up at a port of entry doesn't automatically entitle you to a hearing if you haven't actually crossed into the country.
Both rulings split along the same ideological lines — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Clarence Thomas joining Alito in the majority. Both returned power to the executive branch that lower courts had been chipping away at for years.
The Statue of Liberty's torch is still lit. It just has a front door now, as reported by the Daily Wire.
And the front door has a lock on it.
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