The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado that migrants must physically set foot in the United States to be eligible for asylum, a shift that closes the door to people who wait at ports of entry and seek protection without crossing the line. The 6-3 decision reverses lower court rulings that had required the government to process some of those turnbacks.
For Sonia Sotomayor, who dissented, the consequence was not abstract. She wrote that the Court's reading creates a perverse incentive to enter unlawfully rather than lawfully, because asylum seekers may now apply if they make it across the border illegally but cannot if they remain at the edge of a port of entry and wait their turn.
The ruling lands as one of two major immigration victories for the Trump administration and is broadly seen as making asylum claims harder to win. That is why the case drew attention beyond the legal details: it does not just redraw a rule, it changes who gets to ask for protection at all.
The disagreement at the heart of the case was simple and sharp. Al Otro Lado argued in court that limiting asylum to people who physically enter the United States would push more migrants toward crossings between ports of entry, while the conservative majority, led by Samuel Alito, called that concern overstated. Sotomayor, by contrast, said the Court had done exactly what prior law was meant to avoid, turning the safer and lawful route into the one that could bar relief.
What happens next is less about theory than administration. DHS has not laid out in the record here how it will handle any shift in behavior, and the ruling leaves asylum seekers with a clearer but narrower path: if they want to apply, they must first get inside the United States. For people still waiting at the border, that is no longer a procedural question. It is the line between eligibility and exclusion.
