00:00:32.000It was the Republican appointees on the court versus the Democrat appointees on the court.
00:00:37.000The first decision had to do with people seeking asylum at the U.S. Mexico border.
00:00:41.000The other had to do with the Trump administration unlabeling countries like Syria and Haiti dangerous for purposes of deporting people here on temporary protected status.
00:00:50.000Now, before we get to the content of these decisions, we first need to understand what the Supreme Court does.
00:00:56.000Well, it's important because the left wants the Supreme Court to be a thing it is not.
00:01:00.000So then they yell at the Supreme Court when it doesn't do just kind of what they want.
00:01:04.000Obviously, listen, immigration is a massively hot topic and it's a huge, huge driver of votes.
00:01:10.000And immigration policy helped drive President Trump back to the White House.
00:01:13.000And the open borders policy of Joe Biden did great damage to the country.
00:01:16.000But when we are talking about Supreme Court decisions, particularly, we have to discuss the role of the Supreme Court because if the left doesn't get what it wants, it just attacks the court as an institution.
00:01:31.000Good policy or bad policy, it does not decide whether policy is even good or bad.
00:01:36.000That's why we elect a Congress and a president.
00:01:38.000It's why the Supreme Court is an unelected branch of the government because its job is to interpret what the law means, to decide what the law says.
00:01:48.000So it doesn't get to say, we read the law, the law is bad.
00:01:51.000Now we're overturning the law and putting a new law in its place.
00:01:53.000That's not what the Supreme Court does.
00:01:54.000Now, the left wishes that were not the case.
00:01:57.000For decades and decades and decades, going back really to the 1930s, The left has decided the Supreme Court ought to act as essentially a super legislature, a group of really smart people who can simply rewrite policy they don't like into good left wing policy.
00:02:12.000In fact, what they want is for the Supreme Court to say that when the president or Congress does left wing things, that's legal.
00:02:18.000But when the president or Congress does right wing things, that's illegal.
00:02:21.000The Supreme Court is supposed to be a one way ratchet for the left.
00:02:24.000But again, that's not the job of the Supreme Court.
00:02:27.000And the Supreme Court did its job yesterday.
00:02:29.000It doesn't matter whether you agree with what the Trump administration actually did at the U.S. Mexico border or with Haitian migrants.
00:02:35.000Again, it is not the job of the Supreme Court to agree or disagree with such action.
00:02:39.000The question is, under our Constitution, who has the authority to do what?
00:02:44.000And the Supreme Court said that the Trump administration acted within its legally defined purview and that it could not simply overrule the Trump administration based on not liking it or liking it or whatever.
00:02:54.000If you don't like the policy, in other words, elect a different Congress or a different president.
00:02:58.000Again, that's the job of the Supreme Court now to the content of these decisions.
00:03:02.000Now, the fact that these things even had to be decided at the Supreme Court level.
00:03:06.000All of this turned into a Supreme Court case because of a long history of bad legislation and then presidents taking advantage of bad legislation, which, by the way, is the story of congressional presidential relations basically since Woodrow Wilson.
00:03:22.000Congress passing vague laws, presidents taking advantage of that in order to maximize their own power, and all the rest.
00:03:28.000So let's start with the first decision.
00:03:29.000It was called Mullen versus Al Otro Lado.
00:03:32.000So, first, the background on this decision.
00:03:33.000So, back in 2016, the Obama administration set up a process called metering.
00:03:41.000Hey, there was heavy migration at the southern border, as you recall.
00:03:44.000And until 2016, if you were a non citizen and you were seeking asylum at a port of entry on the U.S. Mexico border, you would cross into U.S. soil and then wait in line for inspection.
00:03:53.000And at that point, we had a legal duty to listen to you.
00:03:57.000And most people would come and they would claim asylum.
00:03:59.000They would claim they couldn't go back to their home country because of a specific threat.
00:04:02.000Now, that is a different thing from temporary protected status, as we'll get to.
00:04:06.000Asylum requires you to show a specific threat to you.0.96
00:04:09.000You can't just say, I want to come here because my home country sucks.0.62
00:04:13.000Okay, so in order for that to be adjudicated, you would come, you would wait in line for inspection at a port of entry.
00:04:20.000And once you were on American soil, then we had a duty to actually listen to your asylum claim.
00:04:24.000Toward the end of the Obama administration, there were so many people arriving at the border trying to get in while Obama was still in office that the government approved something called a metering policy, under which border agents would basically stand at the border and say, Don't come in.
00:05:27.000And if you're not on American soil, we have no duty to you.
00:05:30.000Now, listen, if you don't like that policy, all right, you can vote for Democrats to go back to the Biden way of doing the law.0.69
00:05:36.000Or you could rewrite the law so that people who apply for citizenship have to remain in Mexico.
00:05:41.000That's Trump's remain in Mexico policy.
00:05:43.000Or theoretically, you could rewrite the law where everybody who applies for citizenship, no matter where they are, has to be given an asylum hearing, even if they don't come into the United States, but we don't have a duty to house them.
00:05:54.000There are a bunch of ways you could do this, but that's what Congress exists for.
00:05:57.000Again, the role of the various branches of government is important.
00:06:00.000You elect people to change the policy.
00:06:02.000The Supreme Court is here to interpret What the law currently says, not what it should say or who should be elected.
00:06:07.000So the plaintiffs in this case are a bunch of people who are not citizens.0.64
00:06:10.000They're trying to get into the United States and they say that their rights were violated because their asylum cases were never heard because they were in line and that is as good as being in the country.
00:06:19.000So they never entered the United States.
00:06:23.000And the court, 6 3, in a decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, great justice, says, no, no, no.
00:06:30.000In the United States means in the United States.
00:06:33.000You're not in the United States if you're waiting on the other side of the border.
00:06:36.000So the court says, this case presents a straightforward question.
00:06:40.000Whether an alien who seeks to enter the United States from Mexico arrives in the United States, that's the language of the law, arrives in the United States when he or she is still in Mexico.
00:06:49.000In the decision below, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit answered, yes, that is wrong.
00:06:54.000In 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.
00:07:01.000The context in which the phrase arrives in the United States is used in the immigration statutes at issue here supports an ordinary meaning reading.
00:07:08.000So does the presumption against extraterritoriality.
00:07:12.000We hold that an alien who is standing in Mexico does not arrive in the United States by attempting and failing to set foot in this country.
00:07:18.000An alien arrives in the United States only when he crosses the border.
00:07:22.000Everyday examples confirm that understanding.0.97
00:07:24.000A running back does not arrive in the end zone when he reaches the one yard line.
00:07:27.000A guest does not arrive in a house when he knocks on the front door.
00:07:30.000An army does not arrive in a city by encamping outside its wall.
00:07:33.000And a letter does not arrive in a mailbox while it remains in the mail carrier's hand just inches away.
00:07:37.000Okay, so Justice Thomas writes a concurrence, and his concurrence says, Something further.
00:07:44.000It says that there is no power, none, for Congress to force the president to bring aliens into the country.
00:07:51.000He says the Constitution allows Congress the power to regulate who doesn't get to come in, but the Constitution does not say a certain number of people must be allowed in the country.
00:08:04.000Also, says Thomas, the people in this case are not naturalized or even on the path to naturalization.
00:08:09.000You have no rights under the U.S. Constitution if you do not live in the country, if you're not on the path to naturalization, if you've never entered the country.
00:08:16.000Random Bob from a random country can't just sue the United States on the base of its immigration law.0.54
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00:10:14.000And once again, the only reason this is a Supreme Court case is because Congress passed a law that was incredibly vague and handed tremendous authority to the president.
00:10:22.000And then various presidents have deliberately abused the law in various ways.
00:10:46.000Well, you could be given temporary protected status by the executive branch.
00:10:49.000At the time, Congress designated one country and one country only, El Salvador, as a country where things were so dangerous that you didn't have to be deported back to your home country, even if you were, for example, overstaying your visa.
00:11:03.000TPS can only be granted for people in the country.
00:11:06.000Now, it doesn't matter if you came legally or illegally.
00:11:09.000If you're in the country, TPS can be granted to you if the executive branch deems that your home country is wildly dangerous.
00:12:03.000That was back in 1990, which again is, again, my math, 36 years ago.
00:12:09.000There are now 17 countries from which people are protected from going home.
00:12:13.000The Trump administration came in and they declared that a bunch of these countries are no longer dangerous for purposes of deporting people.
00:12:20.000And those countries include places like Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua, Yemen, South Sudan, Haiti, Syria, Somalia, and Ethiopia.
00:12:57.000Democrats are claiming that basically temporary protected status is a one way ratchet.
00:13:01.000A president can legalize vast swaths of illegal immigration by labeling a country dangerous, but then a subsequent president cannot unlabel that country unless there's a showing that the country is actually not dangerous.
00:13:14.000So current policy is a series of sins.
00:13:17.000The extension of TPS policy from 1990 on to apply to a wide variety of countries, combined with an open border policy where it wasn't just, okay, there are a few people who got caught here and they can't go home because things are really bad.
00:13:31.000Instead, what we'll do is we'll open the border wide and we'll say, if you can get in, right, if you can just get in by falsely claiming asylum, which again, the standard for asylum is not your home country is dangerous, it is you are specifically targeted in your own home country.
00:13:46.000Or if you illegally immigrate, which is what happened under Obama and Biden.
00:13:51.000And then you label their home countries too dangerous to go back to, you can actually effectuate tens of millions of people coming into the country illegally and then getting a form of legal status under TPS.
00:14:00.000The Trump administration is trying to backfill that problem by using the tools they have under the law.
00:14:07.000And what, again, I think are ways that don't meet common definitions, but that's not the question.
00:14:12.000The question is what tools did the Trump administration have under the law?
00:14:16.000Okay, now again, all of this is very hot stuff and was very hot stuff during the election cycle.
00:14:22.000President Trump, particularly, was going after Haitian migrants in Minnesota, pointing out, or Ohio rather, he was pointing out that Haitian migrants in Ohio were not assimilating well.
00:14:34.000Not everyone assimilates at the same rate in terms of general group and culture.0.62
00:14:40.000Pretending that people who are coming from, say, an English speaking country that shares democratic values with those of the United States, a group of immigrants from Australia or something, that that's the same as a group of immigrants from Haiti is silly.
00:14:53.000This became very hot because there were online rumors that turned out to be, shall we say, wildly exaggerated that Haitians were eating dogs and cats around the neighborhood back in 2024.
00:15:18.000They're eating the pets of the people that live there.
00:15:22.000And this is what's happening in our country, and it's a shame.
00:15:27.000Again, there's a very solid remix of that particular line from the president that's popular with Mitchell.0.99
00:15:32.000In any case, it is true that the number of TPS holders from Haiti has exploded.
00:15:40.000According to stats from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, that's USCIS, as well as the Congressional Research Service, in 2010, there were between 50,000 and 70,000 Haitian TPS holders.
00:15:52.00016 years later, there were between 330,000 and 350,000 Haitian TPS holders.
00:15:57.000And remember, all these people have kids, and those kids, we'll find this out later, When the Supreme Court decides on birthright citizenship, those kids are natural born citizens of the United States.
00:16:07.000So, the Supreme Court has to decide whether or not the president can label Syria and Haiti non dangerous for purposes of deportation.
00:16:16.000So, Justice Alito, again, 6 3 decision, he says, quote, In these cases, we consider whether respondents who challenge the termination of temporary protected status for aliens from Syria and Haiti are entitled to orders postponing the terminations during litigation.
00:16:37.000Of any determination with respect to the termination of a TPS designation.
00:16:40.000Again, they're just looking at the law.
00:16:43.000Now, again, you might not like how the Trump administration is using the law, but the law says what the law says.
00:16:49.000Now, the plaintiffs in this case, Haitian migrants who don't want to be deported, they're citing statements made by members of the administration saying that they are doing this because of racism.
00:17:01.000And what the Supreme Court says is, well, not really.
00:17:03.000Citing statements made by President Trump and former Secretary of Homeland Security, Christy Nome, One set of respondents advances an equal protection claim that Haiti's TPS designation was terminated because of the racial makeup of that country's population.
00:17:15.000But ironically, one of the respondents' other arguments undermines the equal protection claim by offering a strong race neutral explanation for Haiti's termination.
00:17:23.000Namely, that the current administration, which has terminated every TPS designation that has come up for renewal, simply opposes the TPS program, at least as it has been implemented in the past.
00:17:31.000So, in other words, you're citing a bunch of comments that Trump made, like eating the cats and the dogs and saying he's a racist and that's why he wants to get rid of people from Haiti and that violates the equal protection clause.
00:17:40.000But in reality, they just don't like the TPS provisions instead of killing them.0.87
00:17:44.000And the law allows them to do that, right?
00:18:15.000Justice Thomas goes further in his concurrence.
00:18:18.000He says Congress barred all judicial review of TPS termination decisions, including constitutional claims.
00:18:23.000Since nothing in the Constitution prohibits Congress from doing so, courts are obliged to simply give effect to the ordinary meaning of the law.
00:18:31.000He says the termination of Haiti's TPS designation does not deprive respondents of life, liberty, or property.
00:18:36.000So they have no claim, even if the words due process implicitly forbid discriminatory animus.
00:18:41.000He says, by the way, that actually there's nothing in the law that even forbids discriminatory animus.
00:18:47.000That this is discrimination, but the law itself doesn't bar discrimination, and there's no equal protection claim that applies to the federal government with regard to migrants.
00:18:56.000He says the discretionary and limited status that a TPS designation provides, like any immigration status for aliens, is a government created privilege, not a core private right.
00:19:05.000We're giving you a privilege to be here, and that can be rejected at any time for any reason.
00:19:09.000If equal protection principles apply to immigration decisions, much of even our current immigration law would conflict with the court's modern equal protection doctrine.
00:19:17.000And the point. that Thomas is making there is that if you were to apply equal protection to immigration law generally, we openly discriminate between countries of origin, which would violate equal protection.
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00:20:35.000So, Sonia Sotomayor wrote a very heated dissent here.0.99
00:20:38.000She actually read her dissent from the bench, which is your sign that you're very upset about a decision.
00:20:43.000If you're reading a dissent from the bench, you're saying that you're upset.
00:20:46.000Sonia Sotomayor says The rest of the current asylum system developed in response to the international moral reckoning that followed the Holocaust in World War II.
00:20:55.000One infamous incident, the voyage of the MS St. Louis, is emblematic.
00:20:58.000In 1939, over 900 Jewish refugees attempted to flee persecution in Nazi Germany by setting sail aboard the MS St. Louis, which was headed to Cuba and the United States.
00:21:07.000The ship docked in the Havana Harbor for days.
00:21:08.000The Cuban government refused to allow the fleeing passengers off board.
00:21:11.000The ship sailed near the Miami coastline.
00:21:13.000The U.S. government turned them away because the immigration laws at the time had strict country quotas and the relevant quota was already filled for the year.
00:21:19.000And eventually it returned to Europe and people on the ship were murdered by the Germans.0.83
00:21:23.000Now, again, that is a horrible, horrible immigration story, obviously.0.92
00:21:27.000The answer to that was that under current law, for example, a case should be made that the president should grant TPS status or that asylum should be processed.0.70
00:21:37.000In other words, the answer doesn't lie with the Supreme Court.
00:21:40.000Again, notice what Sonia Sotomayor is saying.0.70
00:21:42.000She's making a moral case that has nothing to do with the role of the court.
00:21:49.000I agree that people from St. Louis should have been allowed in the country.
00:21:52.000And I also agree that there are certain people who claim asylum who should be allowed in.
00:21:55.000I think the vast majority of people currently claiming asylum to the United States are lying about their asylum claims.
00:22:02.000I even agree that TPS should be allowed for certain people, not certainly the gigantic swaths of illegal immigrants who have been entering the country under.
00:22:14.000But that has nothing to do with the role of the Supreme Court.
00:22:18.000Elena Kagan, in her dissent, she suggests that basically the TPS designation for Haitians being revoked is based on racial animus.
00:22:26.000Now, again, Thomas says it doesn't matter if it was because when it comes to the idea that the equal protection clause even applies to immigration law, how the hell would you do that?
00:22:36.000Kagan, however, says that President Trump saying things like the Haitians are eating the dog and eating the pets and all of the rest of it.
00:22:45.000That is a reason to reject the termination of Haiti's TPS designation.
00:22:49.000I mean, what's funny to me, by the way, is that the court on the left side didn't try to rely on the idea that Trump himself literally called Haiti a bleephole country, which cuts very much against the idea that Haiti is a safe place to go back to.
00:23:02.000Okay, but again, none of that is relevant to the question of what the actual court is supposed to do, what the court is supposed to do.
00:23:10.000And so we have to separate out these two policies because what you're going to see is Democrats attacking the court.
00:23:15.000If they want to attack the Trump administration over the policy, That's fair game.
00:23:19.000Attacking the court, which is what they actually are doing, is wrongheaded.
00:23:22.000The court is interpreting law in the clearest possible way, and the court happens to be right on all of this.
00:23:27.000And the measures the Trump administration are taking are fixes that are designed only in order to counter the complete degradation of immigration law by Democrats.
00:23:37.000Tom Homan, who is our boarders' he points out that temporary means temporary.
00:23:43.000You know, I've been doing this since 1984.
00:24:50.000Of course, Haitians should live in Haiti.1.00
00:24:52.000There's no viable asylum, or use a technical term here, cat claim or withholding claim for any Haitian seeking relief from going back to Haiti, to their homeland.1.00
00:25:02.000The fact that there might be pockets of Haiti where there's higher crime rates, guess what?
00:25:07.000There's pockets of Chicago with crime rates just as high, right?
00:25:11.000There's pockets of cities like St. Louis with crime just as high.
00:25:16.000Pockets of Los Angeles with crime just as high.
00:25:18.000It has never been the case that having communities that have high crime rates is a basis for asylum.
00:25:26.000Okay, now, what Democrats are going to do on the basis of this is they're going to call Republicans cruel.
00:25:33.000So Republicans are going to say, listen, we should not be taking in hundreds of thousands of people illegally and then backfilling that with a TPS designation.
00:25:42.000By the way, the actual proper solution to me, were I in charge of policy for the Trump administration, I'd be recommending that we try to facilitate the entry of Haitian migrants to some sort of third country.0.94
00:25:54.000That, that, that, that, out of what, call it sympathy or just call it basic humanitarian care, sending people to Haiti.1.00
00:26:02.000There's a reason why people are trying to escape Haiti.
00:26:10.000Well, you know, if you think so, head on over to dailywire.comslash subscribe to watch the full show ad free or Check out this crazy story here.