Trump petitions Supreme Court to take up Mexico border asylum ban

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is asking the Supreme Court to sign off on President Trump’s Day 1 proclamation shutting down asylum claims at the U.S.-Mexico border, accusing lower courts of “judicial interference” in declaring it illegal.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer described it as one of the president’s most important initiatives as he urged the justices to take up the administration’s appeal in a petition docketed on Monday.

“The D.C. Circuit should not have the last judicial word on this cornerstone of the President’s immigration policy,” Sauer wrote.

The Supreme Court chooses which cases it hears and turns away the vast majority. The justices will consider the request at a closed-door meeting once their new term begins in October.

Trump signed the proclamation on his first day back in office. It suspends entry for noncitizens who either cross the border outside a port of entry or enter at one but without proper documentation. They can’t try to invoke asylum or other legal protections as long as Trump declares there is an invasion at the southern border.

The petition is the Trump administration’s latest plea for the Supreme Court to allow the president’s immigration agenda to proceed unimpeded. The DOJ has convinced the justices to side with the president on efforts like curtailing Temporary Protected Status and ramping up third-country removals . And in another case, the justices said officials could prevent people from applying for asylum if they’re turned back before actually reaching the border line.

But it hasn’t been a clean sweep. In June, the high court rejected Trump’s Day 1 executive order that tried to restrict birthright citizenship .

The new filing marks the first time Trump’s asylum proclamation has reached the Supreme Court.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss, an appointee of former President Obama, last summer found the policy circumvented Congress. After an appeals court upheld that ruling in April, the administration turned to the justices.

For now, Trump’s restrictions have been allowed to move forward because the appeals court is waiting to formally send down its final mandate until the justices announce how they’ll proceed. But the policy’s long-term future rests with the high court.

Sauer said Trump’s proclamation is a “commonsense” understanding of immigration law and the courts owe deference to the president in restricting the entry of foreign nationals, pointing to the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in 2018 upholding a travel ban Trump enacted in his first term.

“This case involves the President’s exercise of his inherent and delegated authority to secure our southern border, which had become overwhelmed by an ungovernable influx of millions of aliens, creating chaotic conditions that criminal and terrorist organizations exploited to threaten our national security,” Sauer wrote.

The policy faces a class-action lawsuit from people hoping to seek asylum and three organizations: Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, and Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project.

They’re represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and convinced lower courts Trump’s policy didn’t comply with the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

“If the Government wishes to modify this carefully structured and intricate system, it must present those arguments to the only branch of government able to amend the INA: Congress,” the appeals court wrote in its April ruling.