The Supreme Court has unanimously decided to handcuff liberal judges who want to help the growing number of migrants who lose their asylum pleas at the Justice Department.
“The unanimous decision in Urias–Orellana v. Bondi is a win for the Trump Administration in maintaining a high burden to overturn [the Justice Department’s] immigration courts in asylum cases,” said lawyer Jonathan Turley.
The decision means that millions of migrants will face even tougher pressure to leave the United States, especially after they are arrested by ICE.
The win is one of many gains by President Donald Trump’s deputies as they try to accelerate the number of self-deportations and ICE deportations. For example, in December, 38 percent of the migrants detained by ICE chose to go home rather than file lawsuits to stay in the United States.
The court decision in Urias-Orellana v. Bondi was written by the court’s most left-wing judge, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
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A migrant who wants a federal judge to reverse the Justice Department’s rejection of his asylum plea “must show that the evidence he presented was so compelling that no reasonable factfinder could fail to find the requisite fear of persecution,” she wrote.
Because of Congress’s laws, a judicial override is “warranted only ‘if, in reviewing the record as a whole, any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary.’” she wrote.
The language means that federal judges can step in only when the Justice Department’s immigration judges make egregiously unfair decisions.
The win is part of the administration’s push to close the asylum loopholes – dubbed “catch and release” – that are used by Democrats to help millions of illegal economic migrants get work permits, pay their smuggling debts to the cartels, and settle in the United States.
The loopholes also allowed migrants to stay in the country for years while they wait for an asylum decision from the backlogged immigration courts. This policy invited roughly 10 million illegal migrants into the United States, where they nudged down Americans’ wages and pushed up their rents.
Trump’s Justice Department is now firing pro-migrant judges in its immigration courts and is hiring pro-American judges. The result is a massive drop in the award of asylum, green cards, and citizenship to many economic migrants welcomed by President Joe Biden and his pro-migration border czar, Alejandro Mayorkas.
Asylum approvals have dropped from 50 percent in 2023 under Biden to under 10 percent in December 2025.
The new court decision makes it difficult for progressive lawyers to reverse asylum rejections — and also reduces the incentive for migrants to file lengthy appeals of their asylum rejections.
The Justice Department also won a court decision in February that helps it keep migrants in detention while their deportation and asylum cases are processed.
The result of these wins is that more migrants are agreeing to go home quietly once they are arrested by ICE instead of staying in detention so they can file doomed legal claims. CBS News reported on February 12:
One [deported] immigrant … [says she] was relieved when a judge finally ordered for her deportation after 13 months in detention. Although she didn’t ask for voluntary departure, at one point she tried to convince her legal team to ask for her removal.
“I couldn’t fathom just continuing to sit there,” she said. “Every day that I sit here, I’m choosing to sit here. I can sign and have them remove me in three days.”
Pro-migration groups filed the lawsuit in the hope that the Supreme Court would make it easier for lawyers to ask federal judges to override the Justice Department’s asylum decisions.
“Federal courts could take a more active role in evaluating whether the facts meet the legal definition of persecution, potentially expanding protection for vulnerable applicants fleeing violence or persecution,” said ClinicLegal.org, a pro-migration group of legal activists.
Before the ruling, senior judges in the Second, Third, Fifth, Eighth, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits of Appeal decided that federal judges could override the Justice Department’s judges.
