Today the Supreme Court delivered a devastating blow to asylum rights in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado. The case addressed the Trump administration’s now-defunct turnback policy, under which U.S. officials physically blocked people seeking safety at official border crossings, preventing people from accessing the asylum process and stranding them in perilous conditions. The Court’s ruling today gives the government the green light to turn its back on those seeking refuge at our nation’s doorstep, in defiance of our immigration laws.
The Welcome With Dignity Campaign includes legal and humanitarian services providers working along the U.S. border who witnessed the consequences of the turnback policy firsthand. Border communities and advocates know that when we close the door to people seeking asylum, desperate families, children, and adults are forced to pursue even more dangerous routes to safety. Many people perish while awaiting an opportunity to exercise their rights, or are forced to return to the very dangers they fled.
The Supreme Court today also issued a disastrous ruling in Mullin v. Doe, allowing the Trump administration to move forward with terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti and Syria. This decision will upend the lives of hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians and their families, who rely on TPS to live and work safely in the United States.
In the wake of these Supreme Court decisions, the Welcome With Dignity Campaign urges our leaders to oppose any attempt to reimplement turnbacks, to work to restore a fair and humane asylum process at the southern border, and to protect our immigrant and refugee neighbors. Reactions from Campaign members can be found below.
“We believe that today’s ruling in Al Otro Lado violates international law, as well as the express intent of Congress, which enshrined the rights and obligations of the Refugee Convention into U.S. federal law over 40 years ago. For decades, the United States has allowed individuals and families who are fleeing persecution, torture, and death to ask for protection at U.S. borders and exercise their legal right to seek asylum,” said Erika Pinheiro, Executive Director at Al Otro Lado, plaintiff in the Al Otro Lado case. “This decision has destroyed the United States’ position as a global leader in promoting the rights of refugees and threatens to serve as a dangerous justification for other countries that unlawfully prevent refugees from crossing borders in search of safety. In a world of increasing conflict and climate disaster, this hardening of borders to keep out the most vulnerable is sure to result in many more lives lost.”
“These rulings should sound the alarm for anyone who cares about human rights and the rule of law,” said Melissa Crow, Director of Litigation at the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS), co-counsel in the Al Otro Lado case. “The majority opinion in Al Otro Lado suggests the president may unilaterally override decades of established law and trample on people’s legal rights if doing so suits his political agenda. The turnback policy did not merely delay entry for people seeking safety. For far too many asylum seekers, the policy denied entry entirely. In some cases, that became a death sentence. While this decision is a significant blow, our movement will keep fighting to restore asylum as a lifeline for people seeking refuge. We will never turn our backs on those who look to the United States for safety and justice.”
“At a time when more people around the world are being forced from their homes by conflict, persecution, and instability, the United States should be strengthening pathways to protection, not dismantling them,” said Robyn Barnard, Vice President for Refugee and Immigrant Rights at Human Rights First and co-manager of the Welcome With Dignity Campaign. “Today’s decisions will have devastating human consequences for families seeking safety, longstanding members of our community, and our country for years to come. The administration is targeting TPS holders for the same reason it has attacked other humanitarian protections. Stripping people of lawful status makes it easier to enact Trump’s unjust and cruel deportation campaign. The United States has lost all credibility as a nation committed to equal protection of human rights.”
“ImmDef condemns today’s Supreme Court decisions and stands in solidarity with Haitian and Syrian TPS holders and their families, as well as with all those seeking protection from persecution at our borders. These decisions rip away legal status for hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian community members while slamming shut the path to asylum at our border for people fleeing for their lives. In doing so, they have dragged Thomas Paine’s vision of America as ‘an asylum for mankind’ through the mud,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, CEO and co-founder of Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef). “Despite the Court’s attempt to sanitize the administration’s actions, we reject outright the notion that ending TPS was “race‑neutral.” The administration’s rhetoric about Haitian immigrants is clearly rooted in racial animus, and this ruling legitimizes that blatant discrimination. We stand unequivocally with Black migrants and will continue to demand their right to equal protection and fair treatment under our Constitution. These rulings today put the lives of human beings at risk. No legal pretense and no claim of ‘neutrality’ can justify this institutionalized cruelty. Congress has the power to end this. It must act now to pass a permanent pathway to citizenship for TPS holders and create a statutory right for asylum seekers to vindicate their human right to access the asylum protection we have both a legal and moral obligation to provide.”
“These Supreme Court decisions give carte blanche to the administration to continue its assault on legal migration. Asylum protections at the border and TPS are legal instruments that afford protection to the most vulnerable,” said Dylan Corbett, Executive Director of the Hope Border Institute. “Returning people to danger fails the moral tests of compassion and justice and does nothing to address the need to fix our immigration laws. The human, economic and moral toll of expansive deportation policies is immediate and will have far-reaching consequences. Meaningful, humane immigration reform is essential — and the measured, principled voice of faith leaders on the ground, including that of the Catholic Church, must remain central to that national conversation.”
“Today is a profoundly heavy and heartbreaking day for our binational community, for the families we accompany every day on the border, and for the core values of human dignity and legal protection,” said Juan Cuéllar, Director of Education and Advocacy at the Kino Border Initiative. “The Supreme Court’s 6-3 rulings this morning in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado and Mullin v. Doe represent a devastating retreat from our nation’s moral and legal obligations to protect vulnerable human beings fleeing violence and crisis.”
“Today’s decision is another dark moment in our shared history,” said Sergio Perez, Executive Director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law. “People seeking refuge should be met with humanity and compassion. Instead, in a flagrant assault on human decency, the Supreme Court has wrongly validated and further enshrined racism and xenophobia into this country. People do not flee life-threatening harms, persecution, and war by choice. This decision denies the human right to survival and condemns families to the very violence they are escaping. So long as this policy exists, avoidable deaths will occur, and our country will be all the smaller, crueler, and more incomplete. The only way to overcome this is to continue to fight to ensure our laws and government serve – rather than destroy – the freedom to live.”
“The Florence Project is dismayed by today’s Supreme Court rulings in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado and Mullin v. Doe,” said Laura Belous, Managing Attorney at the Florence Project. “These decisions take direct aim at the rights, dignity, and safety of people who turn to the United States for protection and justice and are affronts to both U.S. and international law. While we are angered and disheartened by these decisions, we are not defeated. We will continue to advocate tirelessly for those who arrive at our borders seeking protection from persecution.”
“The International Mayan League, an Indigenous women-led organization, condemns the inhumane SCOTUS ruling in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, which violates international human rights law whose purpose is to protect refugees and the most vulnerable,” said Juanita Cabrera Lopez (Maya Mam), Executive Director, The International Mayan League. “This ruling will be detrimental to all asylum seekers; Indigenous Peoples are particularly vulnerable. Our communities are an already at risk group in extremely dangerous situations in Mexico and other transit countries where they are often targeted by human and sex traffickers and cartels, among other criminal factions, simply because of their Indigenous identity. For Indigenous women and girls, the risks are amplified because of their gender and their inability to report human rights violations due to existing Indigenous language exclusion that prevents them from seeking help or obtaining due process and justice. SCOTUS is cowardly aligning with the executive branch to eviscerate decades of established law that guarantees the right to seek asylum, a literal life way for those fleeing persecution and violence. More than ever, we must continue to be in solidarity defending our collective human dignity and human rights.”
“Policies designed to deter people from seeking asylum do not eliminate the need for protection—they simply increase the risks that survivors who qualify for asylum under our laws face when trying to seek protection,” said Casey Carter Swegman, Director of Public Policy at the Tahirih Justice Center. “Today’s decision in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado will undoubtedly subject women, girls, and all survivors waiting in northern Mexico to additional abuse while simply trying to exercise rights that Congress created under U.S. law. Tahirih will continue fighting to ensure that survivors of gender-based and other persecution can have their claims heard and be treated with fairness and dignity.”
“Today the Supreme Court cosigned the president’s racist anti-immigrant agenda and slammed the door on people the United States should be eager to protect,” said Azadeh Erfani, Policy Director at the National Immigrant Justice Center. “This includes asylum seekers who present themselves at our southern border, only to be pushed away by CBP, and our Haitian and Syrian neighbors, among other TPS holders who have helped our communities thrive while finding safety and stability. Congress has the ability and responsibility to avert the catastrophic impact of these decisions on U.S. communities and our asylum system. Congress must act quickly to stop funding for ICE and CBP abuses, pass legislation providing a permanent pathway to citizenship for TPS holders, and restore the full force of the bipartisan Refugee Act to ensure no one is returned to danger.”
“Today’s decision brazenly rewrites law, ignores precedent, and ratifies cruelty as policy,” said Nicolas Palazzo, Director of Legal Services and Advocacy at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center. “In our daily work in El Paso and throughout the borderland, we see the human lives behind these legal abstractions. Las Americas has accompanied thousands of people who came to this country fleeing persecution only to be denied their fundamental right to seek asylum. SCOTUS has now made that betrayal permanent.”
“Today’s Supreme Court decision allowing the Trump administration to turn back asylum seekers at ports of entry flies in the face of the Refugee Act of 1980, which clearly states that someone ‘physically present in the United States or at a land border or port of entry,’ irrespective of status, can apply for asylum,” said Reverend Noel Andersen, National Field Director at Church World Service. “Faith communities across traditions worked tirelessly to pass the Refugee Act and continue to work together to honor the sacred call to accompany people fleeing violence and persecution in search of safety. Today’s decision does not change our communities’ commitment to welcome the sojourner. We mourn that the Court’s ruling will force people seeking asylum into dangerous and perilous situations and put their lives at risk. But we will continue fighting to restore asylum and build a system that treats all people with dignity.”
“Today the Supreme Court sanctioned slamming the door on people seeking protection and the deportation to harm of hundreds of thousands of TPS holders who are valuable and longstanding community members,” said Yael Schacher, Director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International. “We condemn the majority of the court’s cowardly defense of racism and undermining of the United States’ commitment to providing refuge to those who need it. We are committed to continuing the fight– especially in Congress– to ensure safety and dignity for immigrants and asylum seekers who help make America great.”
“Today, the Supreme Court handed down two decisions that will bring real harm to entire families. People who have rebuilt their lives here — who have worked, started businesses, paid taxes, and supported our communities — are being forced back into the very danger they fled, and we are slamming the door on others who haven’t even had the chance to ask for safety,” said Nili Sarit Yossinger, Executive Director for Refugee Congress. “The US was once the global leader in welcoming refugees. We helped write the rules that define a country’s obligations to those seeking safety. Today, following a long year full of deeply harmful and legally questionable decisions, we broke those rules. The Court may have looked away from the cruelty and racism embedded in these decisions, but we will not. It’s well past time to ask: is this really the country we want to be?”
“Our nation cannot, and should not, block vulnerable asylum seeking women, children, and families from finding safety within our borders,” said Donna Norton, Executive Vice President for MomsRising. “The right to access asylum upon arrival at a U.S. border is foundational to international and domestic refugee law. America’s moms want every asylum-seeker to be treated with dignity, compassion, and respect. As caring people we know that every family, regardless of where they come from, deserves to live in peace and free from danger.”
“These decisions allow the administration to continue dismantling the legal pathways that allow people to seek and live in safety. Asylum and Temporary Protected Status are not loopholes — they are legally established protections rooted in both domestic and international law,” said Michele Garnett McKenzie, Executive Director of The Advocates for Human Rights. “Returning people to human rights violations is a failure of our legal obligations and our moral commitments.”
“It is disheartening to see the Supreme Court turn its back on people attempting to seek asylum,” said Payal Shah, JD, Director of Research, Legal, and Advocacy, Physicians for Human Rights. “The health consequences of turning people attempting to seek asylum at the border are severe and well-documented. PHR’s research and the forensic evaluations conducted by our network of clinicians consistently show that people face compounding physical and psychological harm when denied access to asylum at U.S. ports of entry. The metering policy placed people in the kinds of danger that U.S. and international law exist precisely to prevent.”