BREAKING: SCOTUS Greenlights Trump’s Cruel Immigration Policies

**Leah Litman** (0:00)
Strict Scrutiny is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The Trump administration's excessive Christian nationalist rhetoric is only building as we move toward the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Those most caught in the crossfire are federal workers specifically, a multi-faith group of federal employees filed a new lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture for violating the separation of church and state and the religious freedom promised in our constitution. Our friends at Americans United for Separation of Church and State received emails from multiple USDA employees. A handful of employees reached out saying, the proselytizing Easter email sent by Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, to more than 100,000 USDA employees is an abusive power that violates the separation of church and state promised in the First Amendment.
They are absolutely right. Con law doesn't have to be that hard. I mean, Constitution just straight up says, shall make no law, respecting an establishment of religion. Seriously, what is with these guys in erasing the first sentence of constitutional provisions? That's what birthrights citizenship is about too. Anyways, the hits keep on coming from this administration and Americans United is doing their best to keep up the fight against Christian nationalism. If you want to help, head to au.org/crooked to learn more about their work and how you can get involved.

**Kate Shaw** (1:19)
Mr. Chief Justice, please report.

**Leah Litman** (1:23)
It's an old joke, but when an argument against two beautiful ladies like this, they're going to have the last word.

**Melissa Murray** (2:02)
Hello, this is Strict Scrutiny, your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. We're your hosts. I'm Melissa Murray.

**Kate Shaw** (2:09)
I'm Kate Shaw.

**Leah Litman** (2:10)
And I'm Leah Litman. And ugh, this is an emergency episode. We got four opinions today, including two major immigration cases we wanted to cover right away. These immigration cases written by Santa Lido.

**Kate Shaw** (2:25)
Which basically, we can stop the episode.

**Melissa Murray** (2:27)
Yeah, stop, stop, we're done. We're done.

**Leah Litman** (2:30)
Yup, yup.

**Melissa Murray** (2:31)
We're done. Basically, folks, you already know, if Santa Lido is writing, we're crying.
We're talking about these cases right now because they are very, very significant. They will enable a lot of the Trump administration's gratuitously cruel, careless, and deeply, deeply consequential immigration policy. These decisions will free this administration of most legal obligations. Maybe even give them a get out of law free card to just do their worst with regard to people who are here in the United States, who they believe are not, quote unquote, heritage Americans.

**Kate Shaw** (3:09)
Yeah.
There are a lot of what we might call legal problems with the analysis on display in Santa Lido's two opinions. But also, there's just a bottom line takeaway that we wanted to start with, which is a line from Justice Sotomayor's dissent in one of the cases that sums up the two opinions together, and that is, quote, the consequences of today's decision are predictable, more people will die.

**Melissa Murray** (3:35)
If you're thinking that sounds like Dobbs, you're right.

**Kate Shaw** (3:38)
Yeah. Also, St. Melito.

**Leah Litman** (3:39)
St. Melito was like, let's run that back again.

**Kate Shaw** (3:42)
Just one day off for the four-year anniversary, and we will do more of that. So we're going to focus in this emergency episode on the case about the administration's termination of temporary protected status programs for Haiti and Syria and then the case about an asylum procedure that would allow the administration to avoid processing asylum seekers as required by law so long as immigration officials stop a person at the border. As we said, there were two other cases today. We will say at least a few words about those in our regular episode that will be in your ear holes on Monday morning.

**Leah Litman** (4:16)
Despite what you may hear about this very non-ideological, non-partisan court, both of these opinions were 6-3, and both of them were about as bad as can be.

**Kate Shaw** (4:27)
Okay, so we'll start with the asylum case, Mullen vs. Alotro Lado.
Okay, so as we said, 6-3 decision authored by Justice Alito, and the court basically gave the administration, in this case, a get out of the law governing asylum free card. The specific question in the case is whether an individual who has been stopped at or outside the border arrives in the United States for purposes of asylum law, which would mean the individual has to be allowed to claim asylum and had their asylum claim assessed.

**Leah Litman** (4:57)
Here, the court held that for purposes of the relevant asylum statutes, an alien arrives in the United States when the non-citizen crosses the border into the United States. As the majority reasoned, you don't say a running back is in the end zone when they are standing outside of it. Yes, this was Sam Alito's legal analysis of complicated immigration law.