AMY GOODMAN: The Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a 6-to-3 decision that the Trump administration can turn back asylum seekers at the border, and that doing so does not violate federal immigration law. The turnback policy, euphemistically called “metering,” allows immigration officers at border crossings to block asylum seekers from setting foot on U.S. soil. The policy is not officially in effect. In fact, it was rescinded in 2021, but the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to overturn the 2024 appeals court ruling that found the practice unlawful. And the Supreme Court then agreed to hear the case.

The case is Mullin v. Al Otro Lado. Erika Pinheiro is the executive director of Al Otro Lado, the lead plaintiff in the case. She joins us from Mexico City. And Melissa Crowe, litigation director at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies and co-counsel on the case, is joining us from Maryland.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Erika, let’s begin with you. Talk about the significance of the Supreme Court decision, and talk specifically about the case your organization brought, Al Otro Lado.

ERIKA PINHEIRO: So, first of all, thank you so much for having me today.

We originally brought this case because we documented hundreds of asylum seekers being turned away from ports of entry, and also documented many individuals who were assaulted, raped, trafficked or killed because they could not access protection in the United States. This particular case is so important, and I think that the importance was really minimized by the justices.

Justice Alito engaged in a rather tortured textual analysis, really focusing on the word “in” to basically say that if individuals cannot set foot on U.S. soil, that they do not have the right to ask for protection at the U.S. border. So, this was really not about the text of the statute. It was to reach the political goal of ending access to asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. He uses a few analogies in the decision, but I think the most apt analogy would be if a police officer were standing outside of a polling place, and the Supreme Court decided, even though he’s pointing a gun at you, and you couldn’t go inside the polling place, you still have the right to vote. I mean, it’s just ridiculous. But that, unfortunately, was the decision the Supreme Court.

The practical effect right now is not going to be a huge change, because, like you mentioned, the policy has not been in place since 2021, but the broader effects are really significant. First, it undermines international cooperation around the Refugee Convention. It legitimizes turnbacks for other countries that are engaged in this practice, of which there are many. And it really just solidifies the idea that human beings cannot cross borders to seek safety. And in a time of increasing conflict and climate catastrophe, this will result in many more deaths.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Erika, can you talk some about how this closure of the border, really, that’s happened, especially in the last few years, has impacted Mexico and people and migrants or refugees arriving in Mexico?

ERIKA PINHEIRO: So, like I mentioned, the Trump administration, starting from the first Trump administration, and continuing into the Biden administration, have hardened the border infrastructure, so that individuals who are in Mexico trying to reach the United States cannot set foot on U.S. soil. They are turned away by U.S. officials at the border. When the Biden administration created the CBP One system, which gave hundreds of thousands of individuals appointments to seek asylum in the United States, there were many — you know, they were all waiting in Mexico. That system was canceled by the Trump administration, and approximately 300,000 individuals who had already registered in the system were then stuck in Mexico.

So, here in Mexico City, we’ve worked with a very diverse population of refugees who are now applying for protection here in Mexico. Many have received it, but there is a rule in Mexico that you have to apply within 30 days of entry for asylum. So, a lot of people were already waiting for longer. There’s also very limited capacity here for third-language speakers, those who do not speak English or Spanish, so we’ve been helping those individuals. But I would say that the Mexican asylum system has been overwhelmed, and there are serious safety concerns for individuals forced to wait in more dangerous parts of the country.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And there are also, however, still many people who cross back and forth across the border every day, Americans going to work in Mexico, Mexicans coming to work in the in the United States, or to shop or to go to school. How has that affected the general transfer — comings and goings on the border?

ERIKA PINHEIRO: I would say, after years of living on the border, that it has become more burdensome for people who are crossing for economic or educational reasons. Whenever the United States, or even Mexico, implements a policy that keeps asylum seekers away from the border, it generally will result in longer lines for people who are crossing for other reasons.

But I do want to say that the San Ysidro Port of Entry, which was the initial focus of our litigation, is the largest land border crossing in the world. So, I think between 50- and 100,000 people cross that border every day. So, the Department of Homeland Security saying that they don’t have capacity to process asylum seekers, in addition to those tens of thousands of individuals, is really, I would say, laughable, but obviously the consequences are dire.

AMY GOODMAN: Melissa Crow, I wanted to ask you about Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s surprising speaking from the bench. At least she certainly seemed to surprise Justice Alito, who read the majority decision. In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor referenced the 1939 turnback of the MS St. Louis, a ship of more than 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution in Europe, the boat forced back to Europe after being denied entry to Cuba and the U.S. Eventually, one-third of the passengers were murdered in the Holocaust.

Justice Sotomayor wrote, quote, “Congress passed the Refugee Act in 1980 because it did not want this country to repeat the mistakes of its past. Yet if the refugees on the M.S. St. Louis were to walk up to a port of entry on our southern border today, the majority’s interpretation would allow immigration officers to refuse even to consider their asylum applications by physically blocking them from stepping foot onto U.S. soil. The majority’s interpretation permits the Government to do that even if the refugees complied with all applicable laws and regulations, even if the port had ample capacity to inspect them, and even if turning them back would result in the very persecution from which they narrowly escaped.”

Melissa Crow, if you can respond?

MELISSA CROW: Thank you.

Justice Sotomayor really understands the stakes at issue in this case and at the border. She drew from a quite eloquent amicus brief submitted by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, HIAS, that was involved in helping initially to bring the MS St. Louis back to Europe in an effort to protect those refugees. And they’ve also been involved in protecting asylum seekers on both sides of the border.

This decision is devastating to the rights of asylum seekers. And Justice Sotomayor correctly points out that the majority opinion was rather myopically focused, as Erika noted, on semantics, on the plain meaning of “arriving in,” and they ignore other fundamental canons of statutory interpretation. Asylum law dictates that noncitizens have the right to apply for asylum if they are physically present in the United States or if they are arriving in the United States. Both the district court and the 9th Circuit found that those must be two distinct groups of people, because Congress chooses its words very intentionally. The majority opinion admitted that this might, in fact, be redundant, but, again, focused exclusively on the plain meaning of “arriving in.”

They also found that by turning individuals who are on the threshold of entry to the United States back, that the government is not denying access to the asylum process, but rather delaying access. That is a perspective that is completely divorced from reality, because we know, as Erika said, that so many people who were turned back were so desperate, that they ended up trying to enter between ports of entry, either by swimming across the Rio Grande or by traversing the desert under harrowing conditions, and many, many of them didn’t make it to the other side.

People will die as a result of this decision, and there is simply no excuse for this narrow interpretation of the statute. When Congress passed the Refugee Act, they were codifying our international obligations undertaken after the Holocaust, when world leaders came together and vowed never again to let the turnback of the St. Louis happen. And we have betrayed that understanding — 

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, that — 

MELISSA CROW: — through this decision.

AMY GOODMAN: That boat that was turned back, and so many of the Jews died on board, was called the “Voyage of the Damned.” Before we go, I wanted to ask Erika Pinheiro, who we are speaking to in Mexico City, executive director of Al Otro Lado, if you can describe, in this last minute, before the law was no longer being used, was blocked, what happened to people on the ground.

ERIKA PINHEIRO: Before metering was being used, people could approach a port of entry. And I think all of us have traveled internationally, or most of us have. We know that when you enter a country, you’re usually on the physical soil of the country before you reach an inspection booth. So, that was what was happening at the border. People would enter the United States and then speak to an immigration officer and ask for asylum. Over the past decade or so, that’s no longer possible. They’ve made it impossible for people to set foot on U.S. soil. And so, that really just eliminates the right to seek asylum in the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: But when the policy was in place, one of the things your organization paid for, for example, 12 funerals for people who were waiting at the border.

ERIKA PINHEIRO: Yes, unfortunately, there were a lot of people who didn’t make it. We had clients who were murdered. We had clients who died because of horrible conditions in shelters or camps, including a baby who died of pneumonia in a Tijuana shelter. We have people who were victims of crime in very dangerous border cities. And our organization wanted to make sure that they had a dignified burial, and made sure that the bodies were returned to their home country.

AMY GOODMAN: Erika Pinheiro, executive director of Al Otro Lado, speaking to us from Mexico City, and Melissa Crow, director of litigation at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, thank you so much for being with us.

Coming up, we go to Venezuela, the devastating double earthquakes. Thousands of people are missing. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “A Harbor for Hard Times” by David Berkeley.