President Donald Trump didn't need a speechwriter on Thursday; he needed the Supreme Court.
In two 6-3 immigration rulings, the Supreme Court gave Trump's border agenda room to breathe and left the left's lawfare machine with fewer easy targets.
In Mullin v. Doe, the justices held that challengers to the administration's termination of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian and Syrian migrants weren't entitled to orders delaying the policy while litigation continued.
In Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, the Court cleared the way for border officials to turn back asylum seekers who haven't yet crossed onto U.S. soil.
Learn More: The Supreme Court Says Mexico Still Isn’t America, and Alito Made It Plain
The TPS ruling reaches deep into one of the left's favorite immigration defenses. TPS began in 1990 as a humanitarian tool for migrants from countries hit by war, disaster, or other emergencies.
The latest ruling affects roughly 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians directly, with broader implications for other TPS fights already moving through the courts.
The asylum ruling hits another pressure point. The Biden administration ended the old metering policy in 2021, after a lower court called it unlawful. Trump's administration may now revive a practice that lets border officers limit the flow of asylum claims before migrants step into the United States.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, while Justice Sonia Sotomayor read a dissent from the bench, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. From Reuters:
The metering policy allowed U.S. immigration officials to stop asylum seekers at the border and indefinitely decline to process their claims. It is separate from a sweeping policy to deny entry to asylum seekers at the border that Trump announced after returning to the presidency last year. That policy also faces an ongoing legal challenge.
Under U.S. law, a migrant who "arrives in the United States" may apply for asylum and must be inspected by a federal immigration official. The legal issue in the current case is whether asylum seekers who are stopped on the Mexican side of the border have arrived in the United States.
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito, who authored Thursday's ruling, wrote that the answer is "no."
"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," Alito wrote. "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."
The left's anger isn't difficult to understand. For years, one district judge could freeze a president's immigration policy and turn an election result into a legal waiting room. The strategy worked often enough to become muscle memory: file fast, find a sympathetic court, get a sweeping order, and force the administration to spend months or years fighting for power voters already gave it.
🚨 let me tell you what "the courts cannot stop it" means when SCOTUS says it.. because I'm sure most people don't know..
— 🇺🇸 Edward T. Winslow (@EdwardTWinz) June 26, 2026
it means the Ninth Circuit is done..
for years the Ninth Circuit blocked every TPS termination.. every metering policy.. every turnback order.. judges in… pic.twitter.com/HuU8uwNtR8
These rulings don't end every immigration lawsuit; they do something more useful for Trump. They remind lower courts that immigration law gives wide authority to the political branches and the executive officers Congress placed in charge.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin now has more room to carry out policy without every decision being turned into a nationwide standoff.
The court-packing cries write themselves after rulings like these. Sens. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Tina Smith (D-Minn.), and House Democrats reintroduced legislation in 2023 to expand the Supreme Court by four seats, creating a 13-justice bench.
Their pitch always sounds noble when the left is losing: restore legitimacy, reform the Court, and save democracy. Somehow, reform always means more justices, chosen by Democrats, of course.
House Republicans knew the threat; on June 3, the House Judiciary Committee advanced a proposed constitutional amendment to lock the Supreme Court at nine justices. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) introduced the measure, and the vote ended up 15-8, split along party lines.
Trump could drive the left mad, truly insane, by borrowing its favorite threat. He doesn't even need to mean it. He could ask why 13 justices sounded like reform when Democrats wanted the picks but suddenly sounded like tyranny if Republicans might get them.
The point would land because the left built the argument, polished it, and left it sitting on the table.
America shouldn't pack the Supreme Court. Nine justices have served the country since 1869, through war, depression, scandal, and political panic. But if the left insists the Court's size is just another partisan lever, Trump should make it explain why only its hands belong on it.
The two immigration rulings changed more than border policy; they exposed the left's larger problem. When courts block Trump, the judiciary is sacred. When the courts let him govern, the judiciary needs remodeling.
That's not principle; that's panic with a law degree.
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