Supreme Court to Decide Whether a President Can Shut Down Asylum Alone

The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether President Donald Trump can suspend asylum at the southern border by executive order, taking up an appeal that tests how far a president can go in shutting down a system Congress created.

The case reaches the justices after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that immigration laws give people the right to apply for asylum at the border and that the president cannot circumvent that.

Trump issued the order on January 20. It declared the situation at the southern border an "invasion" and suspended physical entry and asylum access until the president decides it is over. The administration argues it can categorically deny asylum to migrants covered by the order and should not have to accept applications destined to be rejected.

That argument now goes to a Court that has already taken action in 31 cases involving the Trump administration, which has been sued more than 900 times. The asylum dispute is not an outlier. It is one front in a legal war being fought simultaneously across district courts, appeals courts and the Supreme Court.

What the justices decide will govern more than this order. A ruling that the president can deny asylum categorically would hand the executive branch broad authority over who may seek protection at the border. A ruling that he cannot would reaffirm that the right to apply for asylum is set by statute, not by unilateral declaration.

The order's current legal status is also not fully settled: the district court blocked it, the D.C. Circuit held the president cannot broadly deny asylum claims, and the Supreme Court has now agreed to review that holding.

What is clear is the scale. More than 900 lawsuits have been filed against the administration, and the high court is already active in 31 of them. The asylum case will be decided against that backdrop, not in isolation.