The U.S. Supreme Court has declared the President can regulate asylum requests at the U.S. border.

The decision is a useful win for citizens and border security, partly because President Joe Biden excused his lax border policies and subsequent welcome for 10 million economic migrants by insisting he lacked the authority to curb asylum requests.

The six judges agreed:

This case presents a straightforward question: whether an alien who seeks to enter the United States2 from Mexico “arrives in the United States” when he or she is still in Mexico. In the decision below, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit answered “yes.” That is wrong. In ordinary speech, no one would say that a person “arrives in” a place—for example, a house, a city, or a country—before the person enters that place. The context in which the phrase “arrives in the United States” is used in the immigration statutes at issue here supports an ordinary-meaning reading. So does the presumption against extraterritoriality. We therefore reverse [the Ninth Circuit].

The case was brought in 2017 by a law firm, Al Otro Lado, that gains revenue from migants who get into the U.S. economy.

It sued when President Donald Trump’s border deputies pressured Mexico to help regulate — or “meter” — the migrant arrivals at the border.

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Despite this win, many migration experts recognize that U.S. asylum laws need major rewrites to deter future waves of economic migrants who try to get U.S. jobs by claiming persecution in their far-distant homelands.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor objected to the majority decision and read out her objections when the court met to release its decision. She wrote:

The Court today holds that the Executive Branch may circumvent all these mandatory procedures by having U. S. immigration officers stand at the border and physically block noncitizens from setting a foot onto U. S. soil. They may do so even if the asylum seeker is at the threshold of a port of entry designated to receive all noncitizens who seek entrance into the country. Even if the port of entry has ample capacity to inspect that person, including an available asylum officer trained to process asylum applications. Even if the asylum seeker is certain to be persecuted, or killed, if she is turned away.

The Court’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. The majority ignores the statutory context and history, not to mention the longstanding position of the Executive Branch, all of which show that any noncitizen arriving at our doorstep and seeking admission must be inspected and allowed to apply for asylum, regardless of whether her foot has crossed the threshold

The dissent was also signed by the court’s other two liberals, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The court majority responded:

The centerpiece of the principal dissent is an impassioned argument against the administrations’ policy choice, but we have neither the ability nor the authority to assess and countermand that choice. Assessing the policy would require, among other things, extensive inquiry into the number of aliens seeking admission at various ports of entry, the capacities of those ports and available detention facilities, the effects of attempting to detain all the aliens who could not be expeditiously processed, and the effects of alternative policies, such as granting parole. We lack the resources and expertise needed to make such an assessment on our review of the District Court’s summary judgment, and more to the point, we lack the authority to do so.

“Our authority is limited to interpreting and applying the law,” the majority said.