The US supreme court agreed on Friday to hear a challenge over Donald Trump's ban on asylum at the US-Mexico border, one of the most sweeping measures in his immigration crackdown.

The legal question before the court

The Trump administration wants the justices to set aside lower court rulings that declared the executive order banning asylum applications illegal.

At stake are two provisions of the same federal statute. One grants people who fear persecution in their home countries the right to apply for asylum regardless of how they reached the US. The other gives the executive branch a role in deciding who is granted asylum. The administration says this second provision lets it deny asylum outright to the migrants the order covers, without taking in applications it would reject anyway.

Why the administration defends the ban

Federal attorneys argue that backlogs once stretched processing over years, feeding an influx of migrants at the southern border, many of whom were released into the country while their cases were pending.

The challenge from immigration attorneys

Lawyers at the ACLU and the National Immigrant Justice Center respond that crossings at the border were already declining before Trump took office. They say the executive order attempts to unilaterally destroy safeguards the law provides. In their words, it would

They maintain that asylum claims must be assessed case by case, and that the president has no power under the law to bar people from filing an application at all.

What asylum means and the ban's status

People granted asylum may live and work legally in the US.

• •The ban was one of a series of immigration restrictions Trump rolled out upon returning to office in 2025.
• •It has stayed in effect while the case moved through the courts, and the supreme court will now consider it.