A bitter clash among Supreme Court justices came into view Thursday through a pair of immigration rulings, in which Justice Samuel Alito accused his liberal colleagues of blindsiding him.
The friction emerged when Alito announced the court’s decision in an asylum case, adopting a narrow interpretation of what it means for a migrant to have “arrived” in the United States under federal law — a reading that makes it significantly harder for asylum seekers who traveled through Mexico and South America to qualify unless they physically set foot on U.S. soil, reported CNN’s Joan Biskupic.
“The tension really hit a climax, and it came when Justice Samuel Alito read three different opinions from the bench, the first one fairly routine, but the second two having to do with immigration and refugee rights,” Biskupic reported from outside the court. “What happened in the courtroom showed not just the division but the anger between the two sides, and Justice Alito, right there from the bench, accused his liberal colleague, Sonia Sotomayor of blindsiding him, in effect, when she started to read her dissent from the bench.”
“Typically, it’s the justice who is reading the majority opinion who’s the only one who speaks,” she added. “If somebody reads a dissent in this case, from the liberals really protesting what has happened in this refugee case.”
Over roughly 10 minutes, Sotomayor invoked the 1939 voyage of more than 900 Jewish refugees turned away from Cuba and the United States, most of whom later perished in the Holocaust, and tied that history to international treaties protecting people fleeing persecution. She argued the ruling betrayed that legacy and detailed the violence and extortion facing migrants stranded near the border. Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined her.
“Then Justice Alito, who’s going to read another opinion, he stops and he says, ‘If I had known that the dissent was going to deliver that opinion from the bench, I would have said more, I would have said more about why we ruled the way we did,’” Biskupic said. “It was a very bitter response to what we had just heard.”
Alito then pressed forward, announcing a second 6-3 ruling restricting the federal government’s use of Temporary Protected Status for migrants from Haiti and Syria — another significant win for the administration.
The TPS decision could have immediate consequences for refugees who have lived in the U.S. legally for months or years. Biskupic said whether individuals can now be removed depends on their specific status and where they stood in the application process, but the ruling clears a path for the administration to revoke protections it has long sought to end.
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