Below is my column on Fox.com on the two immigration decisions yesterday from the Supreme Court. One of the cases turned on a Clintonesque debate of what the meaning of “in” is. In the end, however, the Court went “all in” with executive authority over immigration policy.
Here is the column:
“In ordinary speech, no one would say that a person ‘arrives in’ a place … before the person enters that place.”
Those words may seem ripped from the pages of Dr. Seuss but they are taken from the 6-3 majority opinion of Justice Samuel Alito in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado. They captured the lost-in-translation character of the Court’s fight over whether undocumented persons must be physically present in the United States to make an asylum claim. In one of a pair of major immigration wins for the Trump Administration, the Court ruled that asylum seekers who are stopped on the other side of the Southern border are not present in the United States. If treated as inside the country despite being outside it, these individuals would be allowed to enter and remain while their asylum claims are pending.
The case highlights the lengths to which the Biden Administration went to facilitate the entry of undocumented persons into the country. It rescinded a policy of “metering” that was put into place by the Obama Administration (and later restored and expanded by the Trump Administration).
In seeking to bar Trump from enforcing the same policy as the Obama Administration, the three liberal justices sounded positively Clintonesque in debating what the meaning of “in” is. Justice Sonia Sotomayor denounced the majority’s “illogical interpretation is driven almost entirely by a fixation on a single word: ‘in.’ Words, however, must be read in context and with attention to how they fit into the statute as a whole.”
In their view, “contextual” reading means that you can be “in” the United States without actually being “in” the United States.
The sharp disagreement in the opinions spilled over to the release of the opinions. Justice Alito read a summary of his opinion, followed by a more lengthy reading by Justice Sotomayor of her dissent. The stinging dissent produced a rare rebuttal from the bench by Alito, who was surprised by the extended comments and said that, if he had not been blindsided, he would have said more, including how “the policy in question was adopted by two very different administrations.”
The court also delivered a major victory in Mullin v. Doe, upholding the right of the Administration to strip more than 356,000 Syrian and Haitian immigrants of temporary protection status. Again, lower courts afforded the Obama and Biden Administrations greater leeway in granting such status than Trump in rescinding it.
The combination of the two opinions offers significant advances for the Administration in addressing millions of undocumented persons in this country.
In her dissent in Mullin, Sotomayor invoked the image of the voyage of the M. S. St. Louis, where Jews fleeing Nazi Germany were not allowed entry in various countries only to be returned to Germany, where many died in the Holocaust.
The problem with the analogy is that all of those on the St. Louis were demonstrably in flight from lethal persecution. Virtually all of the asylum claims made at our borders are rejected as unsupported or invalid. Immigration groups hand out material across the border, coaching immigrants to claim asylum status to guarantee that they can stay in the country for years before any final adjudication can be made. The acceptance rate of these claims is currently below five percent.
The question is how to limit such constructive entries if being “in” the United States does not require actually being in the United States. More importantly, absent a clear legal basis for such constructive entries, it is not clear why courts should be able to dictate such policies. The control of our borders has long been an area marked by heavy deference to the Executive Branch. During the Biden Administration, courts often embraced that discretion as the Administration allowed over ten million unvetted immigrants to enter.
Trump was elected on the pledge to reverse these policies by using the same discretion that his predecessor employed to open the border.
The dissent shows how untethered these opinions are from not just “ordinary speech,” but principles of judicial restraint. Placing these disputes in “context” is a liberating construct that allows a court to read the words “arrives in the United States” to include those outside of the United States. It also gives a glimpse at the likely approach of the new expanded Supreme Court that Democrats are pledging if they regain power.
The decisions in Mullin v. Doe and Mullin v. Al Otro Lado will not erase the backlog in immigration cases or remove millions of unvetted immigrants. That will require both an expansion of our immigration courts and real reforms to further streamline the removal process. However, in two 6-3 opinions, the Administration regained substantial authority in the management of our borders.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Democrat motto
If you can’t win on good ideas for America, change the rules.
Grouping these two cases which are based on very different jurisprudential philosophies shows how far this allegedly legal blog has jumped the shark.
El otro lado was one of Alito’s only justifiable, textualist opinions. But Mullin v Doe required Alito to ignore text – procedures that were not followed by the executive branch. His defense violated the anti-surplusage canon, which shows how nothing matters to him other than the result. Though attempting to rely loosely on textualism he in fact resorts to activist views about the supremacy of executive power.
A principled jurist should have split their votes in these cases but alas none of the bench did, resorting to the 6-3 split that Turley doesn’t think exists.
Actually, it was our three feathered friends on the Court who chose not only to “ignore text, ” but also to ignore statute, to wit, 8 U.S. Code § 1254a, i.e.,
“There is no judicial review of any determination of the Attorney General [Sec’y of Homeland Security] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state under this subsection.”
As the SCOTUS decision indicates, “The TPS statute plainly bars consideration of respondents’ non-constitutional claims. It allows “no judicial review of any determination . . . with respect to the . . . termination” of a TPS designation. 8 U. S. C. §1254a(b)(5)(A). The term “determination” can be used to describe either an individual decision or the whole process leading to a final decision, and under either understanding of the term, §1254a(b)(5)(A) squarely bars all of respondents’ non-constitutional claims.”
AND, as required, notice also was published in the Federal Register.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-11-28/pdf/2025-21454.pdf
Isolating a single clause to defeat the rest of the law isn’t textualism; it’s a result-oriented rewrite.
Statutes must be read as an interlocking architecture. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1254a, Congress did not write a blank check. It bound the Executive with mandatory procedural prerequisites: the Secretary shall review country conditions and shall consult with agencies before a termination can occur. If those mandatory steps are skipped, no legal “determination” has happened to trigger the judicial review bar in the first place. Defining the word so broadly that it shields a total failure to follow the law violates the anti-surplusage canon, turning explicit congressional commands into optional window dressing.
The 1990 legislative history confirms this: the bar was meant to stop courts from second-guessing the substance of a completed foreign policy review, not to give the Executive a free pass to ignore the process entirely. Even Justice Alito has looked to legislative history to protect a statute’s structural design, noting in Zedner v. United States that his interpretation was “entirely in accord with the Act’s legislative history.” He should have used the same principled methodology here instead of defaulting to activist executive supremacy
clown, just admit that you were wrong. Quoting the precise language of the applicable statute is NOT “results-oriented rewrite. ” The publication and notice period in Fed.R. addresses your specious argument. Go sit with the little boys and make your arguments over a good beer.
When you resort to schoolyard insults, it’s a clear sign your legal argument has completely run out of gas.
Your appeal to the Federal Register notice completely misses the mark. Publishing a notice in the Federal Register is just the final paperwork—it is the announcement of a decision. It does not prove that the Secretary actually conducted the mandatory, substantive country-conditions reviews and agency consultations required by 8 U.S.C. § 1254a(b)(3) before making that announcement.
Printing a lawless decision on government paper doesn’t magically make it lawful.
Quoting a single clause while ignoring the mandatory steps required to trigger that clause is the very definition of a result-oriented rewrite. If Congress says “You must do X and Y before you can make a final determination,” and you claim the courts can’t review a total failure to do X and Y just because the Secretary published a piece of paper, you have effectively deleted X and Y from the United States Code.
I’ll keep sitting at the adult table where we actually understand that statutory architecture requires reading the whole law, not just the single sentence that suits your preferred political outcome. Enjoy your beer.
^^^from X, still afraid to use his regular login cuz he’s still hurting from being slapped down.
Not sure why you think I am from twitter?!
But nothing substantive it seems
Georgie Boy, Too bad six senior justices agree with my Yuengling, over your pseudo intellectual Natural Ice.
Nice to see that you think you are smarter than they are.
No substantive response… Why is that?
Nonny at 3:06
“Isolating a single clause to defeat the rest of the law” is precisely cost-effective jurisprudence. If that single clause renders the entire argument DOA, so be it. If you blow your car engine out, are you gonna fix the flat tire?
And don’t try to appear with lofty phrases like hinting at “anti-surplusage canon[s].” Please identify which text or redundant term conflicted in the Court’s decision. I’ll wait.
Anon, can you clarify if these opinions address lawful entry v unlawful entry?
2. Did the people at ports of entry requesting asylum have passports and visas? ( I suppose I can Google that)
3. How does this affect a case such as Abrego Garcia?
Thanks, I’m still confused. The question is a boots on the ground easily understood opinion.
You’re conflating two different opinions, thereby making my entire point for me.
^^^this is X, trying to pretend smartness. from his AI education.
Your car analogy fails because a jurisdiction bar isn’t a blown engine—it’s a locked gate. And to legally lock that gate, you have to follow the combination Congress gave you.
Since you asked me to name the exact text and redundancy, here it is:
Look at 8 U.S.C. § 1254a(b)(3)(A) and (C). Congress explicitly wrote that the Secretary “shall review” country conditions and “shall terminate” the designation only if they find those conditions are no longer met.
The text that conflicts with the majority’s interpretation is the word “determination” in the judicial bar clause. By reading “determination” so expansively that it covers an executive action that completely skipped the mandatory reviews, the Court creates a massive redundancy.
Here is the exact anti-surplusage violation: If the judicial bar triggers even when the Secretary completely fails to perform the mandatory reviews, then the words “shall review” and “shall consult” in subsection (b)(3) are rendered entirely redundant and meaningless. They become dead letters because the Executive can violate them with total impunity.
A principled textualist doesn’t read one word (“determination”) to delete entire subsections of mandatory commands passed by Congress. That isn’t “cost-effective jurisprudence”—it’s allowing the executive branch to rewrite a statute by erasing the parts they find inconvenient.
^^^^straight from the personalized results of an AI text, probably georgie.
Naw, I think six Justices got it better than you did.
Why do you think that? You failed to provide anything of substance.
^^this is clearly X, trying to pretend AI smartness. I THOUGHT it was X but now I am sure.
You are arguing an APA non-constitutional issue that the Court clearly finds nonjusticiable as cited. Same thing Chen tried to do in Saget. The car analogy is both funny and true.
You are confusing an APA review of a decision’s merits with a structural failure to follow the law required to make that decision in the first place.
Furthermore, Saget is inapplicable because that case turned on whether the government’s actions were motivated by unconstitutional animus, whereas the issue here is a straightforward failure to complete Congress’s mandatory procedural steps. If the Executive skips those legally mandated reviews, it hasn’t made a statutory “determination” at all—it has just published a piece of paper outside of its legal authority. The Court choosing to ignore that isn’t logic; it’s activist executive supremacy.
I’m not confusing anything. YOU are not even making sense, which makes me think more and more that you might be X or its alter-ago, piecing together bits of AI.
You can call it a “structural failure,” but it is YOUR failure that is controlling here.
Not even close. No cigar.
The “structural failure” you allude to invokes the elemental requirements of the STATUTE that creates it. The APA is a STATUTORY creation. As the Court repeated, there is no judicial review for the plaintiffs’ statutory claims. It’s that simple. Do you get it?
Moreover, you are making arguments the plaintiffs did not make.
correction. I meant to say that the requirements for TPS, including AG [secretary] obligations under 8 USC 1254, are STATUTORY, in addition to the APA
(and finally, all SCOTUS did was refuse to intervene. REMANDED.)
👍
Temporary does not mean 16 years – that is textualism.
If that’s a serious comment, I’m not sure you know what textualism is.
Can you point to anything in the text that caps the length of a stay at 16 years?
What’s the big deal. Her brain can be inside her head even if its outside her head. Her brain can be inside her head even when it’s actually in Uzbekistan. Don’t you get it??
This Court Needs To Go
Turley often warns that ‘liberals want to pack the court’. But with this decision the court loses whatever legitimacy it had left.
To say the Trump administration has no history of racial animus sounds like gaslighting. We all know that Trump has a documented history of disparaging non-White immigrants.
It was just 2 years ago when Trump stoked that big lie about Haitians eating cats and dogs. Are we to believe that none of the court’s 6 conservatives ‘remember’ that?
Of course they remember!
So it was just a bald-faced lie when Alito wrote ‘there’s no racial animus’. The optics look terrible! Like a court in Russia. Some cynical decision the public isn’t meant to question.
WRONG!
“This Court Needs To Go”
That comment is the poster child for the Left’s anti-intellectualism.
It’s filled with childish insults and emotional ejaculation. And there’s not a single *argument* about what is allegedly wrong with either Supreme Court decision.
You relish the freedoms given you that others gave with their own lives! The beaches of France alone ran red with American blood and YOU say “The Court Needs To Go”. I ask you what is the primary reason for your statement? Are you angry because your government checks from hard working Americans are not providing enough booze and drugs to your liking? Perhaps your anger because multiple iterations of family members from afar have not been allowed into the county are were removed. No doubt you vote Democrap and cring at the idea having to show a ID to vote. If you live in a Blue State stay there Red States don’t want you; your a pariah by your own comment. The Democrap Party is imploding, the Communists starting in NYC smell fear and see the old guard as frail and will consume them. The Democrap Party is Demonic where as the Republican Party to some degree, it’s leadership seems to walk the narrow road towards the narrow gate. Time is short!
LOVE AMELIA!!!
HEAR, HEAR!!!
This Amelia meme is popular in Britain:
Cute ad but I’m not sure how the British culture can survive. The heritage and traditions of a once upon a time kingdom appears to be retiring, also.
George Will On Yesterday’s Decision
The pungent odor of Kristi Noem lingers in Washington. Nearly four months after she was fired as homeland security secretary, a facet of her tenure produced a Supreme Court case, decided on Thursday.
Her behavior egregiously violated the pertinent law, but was shielded from judicial rebuke by the court majority’s too-mechanical textualism about the secretary’s “determination,” meaning decision. And by a blinkered nonrecognition of the animus behind Noem’s action.
The law required Noem to review conditions in Haiti after consulting with appropriate government agencies (note the plural). Instead, she made her decision, then conducted a make-believe “consultation.” A Noem staffer sent a two-sentence email to a State Department staffer who, 53 minutes later, sent a comparably brief judgment that Noem’s policy triggered no foreign policy concerns.
Justice Kagan, however, noted the irrelevance of this: The law requires consultation not about foreign policy implications but about whether conditions are safe in the pertinent country. And Kagan refuted the majority’s claim to see “no evidence that race played any role in the Haiti decision.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/06/26/supreme-court-ruling-haitian-syrian-immigrants-mistaken/
…………………………..
Justice Kagan noted Trump’s long history of making racially-charged comments regarding non-White immigrants; especially the Haitians.
Therefore Alito’s opinion that he found “no evidence race played any role in the Haiti decision” seems glaringly false to anyone familiar with the Trump presidency.
Keep crying loser.
Blacks live a pretty good life in America. Too bad that their crime rates exceed their representation in population, particularly for violent crimes-murder and non=negligent homicide. WE HAVE NO DUTY TO LIE ABOUT THE TRUTH.
https://www.theglobalstatistics.com/crime-statistics-by-ethnicity/
Will was once a fairly reasonable conservative commentator, if a bit too sympathetic to the Deep State. However, TDS exacerbated by age-related dementia seem to have taken a heavy toll. I cannot even imagine the George Will of a couple of decades ago siding with a leftist like Kagan on anything.
Wow, I can’t believe that Justice Jackson missed the opportunity to razz Justice Barrett over her adopted Haitian children! She must be on her meds now.
I’m perfectly comfortable being from Kansas. Therefore, I don’t need the whole world to set aside an entire month to celebrate the “pride” of being from Kansas.
OT, illustrative of leftist thinking in America:
Saint Paul, Minnesota education official, and BLM leader, urges desecration of white Christina graves with dog urine:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/minnesota-school-board-member-under-fire-after-saying-dogs-should-urinate-white-corpses-cemeteries
OT, illustrative of communist thinking:
A school in southern France had to resort to teaching in the corridors because the classrooms were too hot. The parents all chipped in for air conditioners, and raised enough in three days. Great, you think. No, according to the socialist governing body the school shouldn’t have air conditioners because “it sets a precedent” and “in some neighborhoods, parents don’t have the means to act.” So . . . the air conditioners and the teaching in classrooms were forbidden.
Socialism means everyone suffers equally.
https://x.com/therealmissjo/status/2070034353539727374
Private property also goes to who and a persons are as I am my own property.
^^^^😂. Private property also goes to–> I am my own property.
Is it socialist or communist? Not that I expect much from an old man from Kansas, but staying on one line of hate would be appropriate.
Be mindful of the history of France where very poor people showed very wealthy people to the guillotine and the hangman over large differences in the way they are treated. Having an appreciation for what the poor go through builds some empathy, a factor lacking in Kansas, apparently.
DACA Recipients Needlessly Jerked Around
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients sued the federal government Thursday, citing significant delays in renewals of their status under the Trump administration.
DACA recipients must renew their status every two years. The suit was brought on behalf of numerous plaintiffs who followed recommendations to apply to do so at least 120 days in advance of their status expiring.
“Yet DACA recipients who follow this guidance are finding their current DACA grants lapse before their renewal requests are adjudicated, with potentially life altering consequences that can include exposure to deportation, loss of work authorization, loss of education opportunities, and loss of employment that may provide a pathway to lawful status,” the suit states.
One group involved in the suit has filed DACA renewals on behalf of 500 clients this year, only to have 319 still pending after more than six months.
In one instance, a 26-year-old medical school graduate is now unable to begin his residency in anesthesiology because his DACA renewal has not yet been adjudicated.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5943072-daca-renewals-face-delays/
………………………………….
Aside from racism, there is no logical justification for these Trump policies. Like, ‘What interest does this country have in stopping people from becoming doctors?’
I don’t know, maybe they bumped a citizen out of a slot at med school due to profiling?
The demand for racism exceeds its supply. The Left has played the racism card for so long and so often it is threadbare and people easily see through it.
Yeah. A three year old brought to the US by their parents had a long term plan to bump a US Citizen from med school. However, med schools don’t do profiling; they are the ultimate meritocracy as they only want the best doctors to graduate from them. Graduating anything less reflects poorly on them and the other doctors who leave them.
While waiting renewal, you can continue employment AND academic status up to one year after your DACA has expired.
You are so gullible.
(awaiting)
If DACA is renewed then there is two years.
Which is better?
DACA is a O-dumber joke on the USA.
They might ask their parents? Repeatedly the US has asked via asylum for them t9 come forward but they don’t and another million shows up.
Incredibly self serving and sociopathic behavior. How many times in good faith before they follow US law regarding immigration. The US has now been forced to lock down the border to stop it at origin and the court agrees. Absolutely uncivilized…
What a difficult job a Supreme Court Justice is. These people are intelligent.
Mullin v Doe is a nuisance case?
^^^ J. Amy Barrett thinks do only what is necessary. These nuisance suits with little work done are fishing expeditions.
This court system is becoming an industry and lucrative. Don’t train the manipulators.
If the devil is inside every single one of us, then we
should have the devil nuked out of us.
Not in my dreams
Today is the four-year anniversary of the overturning of the worst Supreme Court decision in American history.
My Body, My Choice, Says The Fetus
And here are some bonus scientific facts that prove it’s not just an organ or part of the mother.
During its early stages of development, the placenta of the unborn child secretes neurokinin B-containing phosphocoline molecules, which protects the child from detection by its mother’s immune system, because it can be interpreted as a foreign body and is subject to attack. This is because the fetus is of non-identical genetic material to the mother due to their different DNA.
Also present in the unborn child are lymphocytic suppressor cells which stop interleukin 2 (IL2) cells from signalling cytotoxic T cells to kill the child. The purpose of IL2 cells is to distinguish between self and non-self (parts of the mother and foreign parts). The lymphocytic cells would not need to inhibit the response of the cytotoxic T cells if the IL2 did not signal the feuts as a foreign body. This would not occur if it was one of her own organs because the response would not be initiated.
An organ does not have its own organs. The fetal heartbeat begins at around 22 days after fertilisation as I said earlier, and brain waves are detected at about six weeks, which means the unborn child has a heart and a brain. At seven weeks, all other organs are present, although not fully developed, which would mean not only did the mother have an organ with different DNA to her, but this organ also has its own organ systems, and so the mother has an extra heart, brain, stomach, liver, etc.
– Emma Greenland-Broadsmith
I do feel sorry for Harry Blackmun’s soul right now. It’s writhing in hellish agony being confronted with the tens of millions of lives he indirectly caused to end. He will never escape from that agony.
Who is this creepy Trumper telling us that fetuses are more important than the women carrying them?
It is an awful thing to say. I agree.
. . . telling us that fetuses are more important than the women carrying them?
Who said anything about “important.” That’s your own invention.
It’s not “my body, my choice”; it’s the fetus’ body, and the fetus fights its own mother for its own separate life (expletive deleted). That fetus wants to live despite its mother’s evil and disgusting desires.
They (both) are important. It’s a shame you only care about one of them.
Copy-paste wrong information. Pacemaker cells develop at 22 days. There is no heart to beat. There are no more brain waves than in a fetal dog at the same time.
If the organism is separate it can live on its own. It has to develop like a cancer does.
I don’t think you have the right date, but worse than Dred Scott, Plessy, and Korematsu?
Tied for worst with those three.
Dred Scott must be celebrated by you.
Roe v. Wade was a good decision because it recognized that women who don’t want to raise a child are going to be bad at it, forcing a child to grow up tortured and unloved and neglected and run a great chance of becoming criminals, sometimes killers. It was also a good decision because it reduces the risks from such conditions as ectopic pregnancy that isn’t viable, but can kill the mother.
The ones who disagree with this are men who see women as objects for producing children and ones who are hateful of women who don’t care if they suffer or die as a result of being forced to remain pregnant.