Supreme Court Agrees to Decide Whether Trump's Day-One Border Asylum Order Can Stand

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to take up President Trump's executive order suspending access to asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, setting up a final ruling on one of the administration's central border-security measures, The Associated Press and NBC News reported.

The administration asked the justices to overturn lower-court decisions that found the order illegal. As The Daily Signal summarized its position, the government maintains it may categorically deny asylum to migrants covered by the order and is under no obligation to accept applications that would be denied under it. Arguments are expected in the coming months, with a decision due by the end of June, according to the AP and NBC News.

Trump signed the proclamation on January 20, 2025, his first day back in the Oval Office, declaring that the southern border faced an "invasion". The administration relies on Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which lets a president suspend the entry of classes of foreigners whose entry he finds harmful to the national interest.

In its August petition in the case, now titled Mullin v. RAICES, Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices that the government's border progress "risks evaporating if the ruling below is allowed to take effect," SCOTUSblog reported. Sauer also compared the dispute to the 2018 travel-ban case and argued this one is even more important, and he objected to the lower courts letting the challenge proceed as a class action.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington ruled that the president had exceeded his authority, and a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed in April. The panel majority held that the law lets a president suspend entry but does not let him bypass the asylum and removal procedures Congress wrote, Bloomberg Law reported.

Judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee, dissented in part. He would have allowed broad denials of asylum while keeping migrants' separate protections against being sent to countries where they would face persecution, and he warned that the ruling could reach potentially millions of people without grounds to sue. The appeals court then put its decision on hold while the Supreme Court considers the case, which has let the administration keep enforcing the policy, the AP reported.

The challengers, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and immigrant-advocacy groups, argue that federal law gives people the right to seek asylum if they fear persecution at home, no matter how they reached the United States.

The administration points to the border numbers. The Department of Homeland Security said in October that preliminary figures showed 98,708 apprehensions at the southwest border in fiscal 2026, which ended Sept. 30, a drop of roughly 95 percent from annual levels under the Biden administration.

NBC News noted that this will be the third major case on the president's immigration agenda that the justices decide this term. The ruling is expected to settle how far a president's power over entry at the border reaches, and whether the order that has been in place since the first day of the administration can stand.

Liberty Bell Report will update this story as the Court sets a date for arguments and as the administration and its challengers respond.