A bipartisan group of former high-ranking U.S. government officials today condemned the Supreme Court’s ruling in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado. The decision states that the government can turn back people seeking asylum at ports of entry along the southern border, rubber stamping a now-defunct Trump administration policy that the lower courts had struck down as unlawful.
The group includes former officials in the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security, State, Justice, Health and Human Services, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and the National Security Council, who have dedicated their careers to ensuring the U.S. government upholds its international and domestic commitments to provide humanitarian protections to the world’s refugees.
Earlier this year, the officials submitted an amicus brief in Al Otro Lado, imploring the high court to recognize the turnback policy’s illegal and unworkable nature. The brief decried the policy as “contrary to U.S. law,” “flout[ing] our country’s most profound values and international commitments.”
“Since 1980, U.S. law has guaranteed a legal right to apply for asylum to those fleeing persecution and arriving on our shores,” said Michael Posner, Director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at the NYU Stern School of Business and former Assistant Secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. “This decision slams the door shut, denying this most basic protection of U.S. law even to those who face likely persecution in their home countries.”
“The Court’s decision contravenes a founding principle of our country which was later codified into law in the Refugee Act of 1980: that we will offer protection to those who may be fleeing persecution and arrive at our borders,” said Scott Busby, Senior Advisor at Human Rights First and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. “This not only belies our history but poses a fundamental threat to the international system of humanitarian protection that was founded on the heels of the Holocaust.”
“This decision forecloses asylum in the United States to all but a few people, continuing the Court’s practice of giving the Trump administration unchecked power to implement immigration policies that ignore the law, human rights, and U.S. obligations under international treaties,” said Mary Giovagnoli, policy expert and former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Immigration Policy at the Department of Homeland Security. “Denying access to asylum to some of the most vulnerable people who arrive at the border exhausted, persecuted and traumatized does not advance national security - it only demonstrates that the U.S. has lost its moral compass.”
“The Court majority twists words to negate Congress’ intent and to stain our nation’s noble tradition of commitment to the international human right of asylum,” said Harold Hongju Koh, Sterling Professor of International Law, Yale Law School and Former Legal Advisor and Assistant Secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. “The ball is now in Congress’ court.”
“Justice Sotomayor’s dissent reminds us of the U.S. refusal to allow asylum seekers fleeing Nazi Germany on the M.S. St. Louis to disembark in 1939,” said Anne C. Richard, former Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration. “This incident remains a horrible stain on our national conscience. When will we learn?”
“This is a disastrous—but tragically unsurprising—decision,” said Eric Schwartz, Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, Former Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, and Former Assistant Secretary of State for Population Refugees and Migration. “It ignores what Congress intended, breaks with longstanding legal principles, diminishes America's commitment to protecting refugees, and advances the agenda of a president who has openly fashioned himself as an authoritarian leader.”