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Faith-based groups hold a vigil at the court before a March hearing.<\/span>Bill Clark\/CQ\/Roll Call<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Supreme Court<\/span> made one thing plain this week: It is an anti-immigrant court. There were hints before\u2014big<\/a> ones<\/a>, to be honest<\/a>. But in three rulings this week, the Republican-appointed justices voted to green light Trump administration policies against immigrants that both defy federal law and carry a massive humanitarian toll. This week\u2019s decisions display, at best, a callous disregard for the wellbeing and safety of millions of people. At worst, they signal that an anti-immigrant mindset <\/strong>has taken hold of the court\u2019s conservative wing.<\/p>\n On Thursday, the court issued two decisions with shocking human consequences. First, in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado<\/em>, the court allowed the administration to deny immigrants the right to apply for asylum <\/strong>simply by preventing them from technically crossing the border. The relevant law states that immigrants \u201carriving in\u201d the US may apply for asylum. In a gotcha-type trick typical of a middle school bully, the administration claims that if it can prevent people from physically stepping across the border, they can ignore all the mandatory processes Congress set-up to process asylum seekers who come to the nation\u2019s doorstep. The 6-3 majority agreed, using a juvenile grammatical argument to render the law contradictory and unenforceable. Because Congress used the preposition \u201cin,\u201d the administration is now free to defy the law and deny thousands of immigrants fleeing persecution their right to apply for asylum. The conclusion is as stupid as it is cruel.<\/p>\n Justice Samuel Alito\u2019s majority opinion in the case, joined by the other five GOP appointees, ignores the policy\u2019s devastating toll. But Justice Sonia Sotomayor\u2019s dissent does not. She describes the violence visited upon immigrants as they endlessly wait in makeshift camps along the border to be able to apply for asylum, and the tragedy of mothers, fathers, and children drowning in the Rio Grande after being turned away from a port of entry.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe consequences of today\u2019s decision are predictable. More people will die.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cThe current asylum system developed in response to the international moral reckoning that followed the Holocaust and World War II,\u201d Sotomayor wrote, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. In 1939, the United States turned away the M.S. St. Louis<\/a><\/em> carrying Jewish refugees. Forced to return to Europe, many of its passengers died in concentration camps. \u201cCongress passed the Refugee Act in 1980 because it did not want this country to repeat the mistakes of its past,\u201d she continued. \u201cYet if the refugees on the M.S. St. Louis<\/em> were to walk up to a port of entry on our southern border today, the majority\u2019s interpretation would allow immigration officers to refuse even to consider their asylum applications by physically blocking them from stepping foot onto U.S. soil.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe consequences of today\u2019s decision are predictable,\u201d she concluded. \u201cMore people will die. More people will attempt to cross the border illegally, and some will make it while others will not.\u201d Like in 1939, the blame for that bloodshed will be on the United States. In place of the statutory scheme Congress erected to remedy past mistakes, the majority lets the Trump administration repeat them.\u00a0<\/p>\n Whereas the asylum case<\/span> allowed the Trump administration to turn away people seeking humanitarian relief, the next opinion gave it effectively unreviewable power to strip millions of immigrants of humanitarian relief they are already receiving in the US. Under federal law, the executive branch can grant people from crisis-torn countries what\u2019s known as Temporary Protected Status, allowing them to legally stay in the US while their home countries remain unsafe. These TPS designations are periodically reviewed and can be extended or terminated depending on if conditions have improved.<\/p>\n In Alito\u2019s opinion in Mullin v. Doe<\/em>, the Supreme Court allowed<\/a> the Trump administration to prematurely terminate TPS for 350,000 immigrants from Haiti and Syria. The decision frees the <\/strong>administration to strip legal status from 1.3 million immigrants from 17 countries.\u00a0<\/p>\n In revoking TPS for Haitians, the administration made a mockery<\/a> of the legally-required process. Yet the Roberts Court blessed that lawlessness on Thursday by finding that the decision to revoke TPS is generally <\/strong>unreviewable by courts. As a result, the rules Congress put into law to govern <\/strong>TPS designations are now mere suggestions. Just as in the case about blocking immigrants from ports of entry, the six justices in the majority gave the president the authority to run roughshod over the law. In both cases, mostly nonwhite immigrants will suffer the dire consequences.<\/p>\n While the decision left the door open for people stripped of TPS to make a constitutional claim, as Alito\u2019s opinion shows, it\u2019s unclear whether this court would ever agree there was a valid one. In this case, the plaintiffs argued the revocation was driven by racial animus in violation of the 14th Amendment\u2019s equal protection mandate. The majority brushed aside the cascade of racial dog whistles and stereotypes Trump targeted at <\/strong>Haitians in the US. \u201cNone of the cited statements by either the President or the Secretary was overtly racial, and in substance all expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications,\u201d Alito wrote.<\/p>\n In her dissent, Kagan accuses the majority of refusing to quote the presidential language that they claim is so innocent. So Kagan, joined by the other Democratic appointees, memorializes<\/a> it in her dissent:<\/p>\n Haitians are \u201ceating the dogs . . . . They\u2019re eating the cats. They\u2019re eating\u2014they\u2019re eating the pets of the people that live [in Springfield, Ohio].\u201d And: Haitians are also eating \u201cother things too that they\u2019re not supposed to be.\u201d And: Haitians in the United States \u201cprobably have AIDS.\u201d And: Haiti is a \u201cshithole country,\u201d which is \u201cfilthy, dirty, [and] disgusting.\u201d And: Haitian immigration is \u201clike a death wish for our country.\u201d And: Haitians, along with some others, are \u201cpoisoning the blood\u201d of our country. And: \u201cWhy is it we only take people from shithole countries\u201d like \u201cHaiti [and] Somalia\u201d? \u201cWhy cannot we have some people from Norway [and] Sweden?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Under Supreme Court precedent, a plausible race-neutral justification is not enough to overcome evidence of a racist motive. And yet, just as it waved the law aside, the court waves away the pesky 14th Amendment (at least as it pertains to racial minorities). After oral arguments in the TPS case, the attorney for the Syrian plaintiffs, Ahilan Arulanantham, had said<\/a> that the question before the court is whether the government can \u201cignore the law when it tries to take away someone\u2019s immigration status.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n When it comes to TPS, the answer is yes. When it comes to asylum seekers, the answer is yes. And even for immigrants granted permanent residency, the Supreme Court placed executive caprice over the law.<\/p>\n In a third case this week,<\/span> the Roberts Court also answered yes to demoting the status of green card holders, permanent residents who have lived in the United States for years, even decades. On Tuesday, in Blanche v. Lau<\/em>, the same 6-3 majority gave border officials the discretion to take away a green card at a port of entry if they suspect that the legal permanent resident reentering the country may have committed a crime involving moral turpitude, a vague grouping of crimes in immigration law. As my colleague Isabela Dias wrote<\/a> Tuesday, \u201cagents at the border have just been given exceptional discretion to bypass protections generally afforded to green card holders.\u201d<\/p>\n In her dissent, Jackson explained that the decision undermined the \u201cbenefits and security that come with having a green card,\u201d empowering border officials to reclassify a permanent resident\u2019s status on a hunch, then justify it later with \u201cpost hoc<\/em> evidence.\u201d Just as in the other two decisions from this week, in Lau<\/em> the Supreme Court destabilizes the entire immigration system, relied upon not just by immigrants and their families\u2014but also employers like hospitals and universities\u2014by replacing the certainty of the law with the whims of the president and his agents.<\/p>\n With just <\/strong>a few days left before the justices begin their summer recess, we are still awaiting the court\u2019s ruling on the meaning of birthright citizenship<\/a>. The Trump administration is seeking to deny citizenship<\/a> to thousands of people born<\/a> in the US to parents of temporary visitors and undocumented immigrants. The justices are expected to reject this attempt and uphold the principle, written plainly in the Constitution, that virtually <\/strong>all people born in the US are citizens.<\/p>\n The justices may think that, by upholding birthright citizenship, they can wash their hands of the anti-immigrant stench from these three rulings. They may presume that their refusal to acknowledge Trump\u2019s blatant racism will be cleansed when they sign an opinion bashing slavery and praising the principle of equality. They may hope that in recognizing the practical consequences of ending birthright citizenship, the cruel results of this week\u2019s rulings will be overshadowed.<\/p>\n But no matter what happens in the birthright citizenship case, this court is a partner in the administration\u2019s cruel, racist, anti-immigrant crusade. In just one week, the majority showed its true colors.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n
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