The Supreme Court said Friday it will review President Donald Trump’s policy restricting entry to asylum seekers at the border between the United States and Mexico, a policy central to his immigration agenda.
The case is one of several high-profile immigration matters the Supreme Court has agreed to review in the coming months.
On the first day of his second term, Trump issued a proclamation barring entry to people seeking asylum for public safety, health and economic reasons until the administration found that “the invasion at the southern border has ceased.”
Advocates for immigrants challenged the policy, arguing that the president lacked the authority to impose the restriction. Federal law gives migrants the right to seek asylum if they fear persecution based on their political opinions, race or other reasons.
“The president does not have the right to unilaterally override the protections Congress has afforded those fleeing danger,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement Friday.
Crossings at the southern border have plummeted in recent years. Border encounters have fallen from more than 2.4 million in 2023 to just under 140,000 last fiscal year, which ran from Oct. 1, 2025, to Sept. 30, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures.
“The single most important factor in the President’s success at the border has been this executive order, which he signed on day one,” James Percival, general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, wrote in a social media post about the court taking up the case. “After successfully preserving this authority in lower courts for two years, we look forward to presenting our arguments to the Supreme Court.”
The high court’s decision to hear the asylum issue adds it to the mounting list of immigration-related cases awaiting the justices.
Next month, the justices will hear arguments about the Trump administration policy of deporting immigrants to countries that are not their own. It will also hear arguments regarding the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s mandatory detention policy — in which undocumented immigrants who have lived in the country for years are detained until their deportation cases are resolved, which could take weeks or months.
The court’s 6-3 conservative majority has been largely sympathetic to the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
This year, the court allowed the administration to cancel temporary humanitarian protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants living legally in the United States. The justices also said immigration officials are allowed to physically turn back asylum seekers from crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
But the court also has handed Trump high-profile defeats, including rebuffing his attempt to ban birthright citizenship. The court in June narrowly upheld the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.
Maria Sacchetti contributed to this report.
The post Supreme Court to review Trump policy blocking asylum seekers at border appeared first on Washington Post.
