By identical 6-3 votes, the Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump two victories. According to Associated Press, it ruled that the president can turn back asylum seekers at the southern border, and he can immediately halt the temporary protection from deportation for Syrians and Haitians.
Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
"Neither one of these cases should ever have reached the Supreme Court. They're both preposterous. The asylum case basically asserted that someone who isn't in the United States yet is in the United States,” Krikorian says. “The point was whether people who are still in Mexico can claim asylum in the U.S., even though they're not in the U.S. The idea that there were three justices who voted the other way is alarming, actually. "
Ira Mehlman is media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
"It will end the surge of people coming here abusing our asylum policies. What we saw under the Biden administration was that people understood that if you came, you made a bogus claim for asylum here in the United States, you'd be allowed in,” Mehlman says. “The backlogs would preclude any hearing on your case probably for years and years, which case you got to stay here and develop other claims to be able to remain here in the United States."
Krikorian warns that a future Democrat president can reopen the border.
"Democrats don't believe in orders, period. This is becoming the mainstream view among Democrats," Krikorian says.
When it comes to Temporary Protected Status (TPS), Krikorian says Congress must act.
"Congress needs to abolish TPS because presidents have shown they cannot be trusted to administer it responsibly. In addition to that, Congress needs to prohibit the executive branch from giving work permits to people whose status doesn't call for that," Krikorian says.
It seems, Mehlman says, that only six of the nine justices understand what the word “temporary” means. He states that coming from a country where there is chaos doesn’t qualify individuals to stay in the U.S. forever.
"We understand why people don't want to go back there, but that was not the purpose of Temporary Protected Status. It was established by Congress in order to give people whose country was affected by some unforeseen disaster, manmade or an act of God, some temporary reprieve to remain here,” Mehlman says. “At some point you have to say, if chaos is the status quo, if it's the norm for that country, that's just how it is."
Mehlman believes the Trump administration will move forward to remove the Haitians and Syrians from the U.S.
