Hello, this is Jeff Barnum reading the Supreme Court syllabus in Mullen, Secretary of Homeland Security et al. versus Al Otorrado et al., Surti to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Argued March 24, 2026, decided June 25, 2026. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, or INA, governs the process by which an alien who arrives in the United States is inspected by border officials, is deemed an applicant for admission, and may apply for asylum. The question in this case is when an alien who seeks to enter the United States from Mexico arrives in the United States within the meaning of that phrase in two key INA provisions, 8 United States Code, sections 1158, subparagraph A1, and 1225, subparagraph A1, when the alien is standing in Mexico at the border, or only when the alien crosses the border and enters the country. In the spring of 2016, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, began experiencing a surge of aliens seeking admission at ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border, with numbers sometimes far exceeding safe and secure processing capacity. In November 2016, the Department of Homeland Security responded by adopting a policy of metering the number of arriving aliens whom CPP would inspect each day and allow to apply for asylum. To enforce the policy, officials stood on the U.S. side of the border and prevented aliens from entering the United States beyond the number the port could adequately process. The metering policy continued through the change in presidential administrations. In 2017, asylum seekers and the immigration advocacy organization Al Otro Lado brought a putative class action against the government in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, arguing that CBP's enforcement of the metering policy unlawfully withheld inspection and asylum processing from aliens who arrive at the border and seek to enter the United States. The District Court certified a class of all non-citizens who seek or will seek to access the asylum process by presenting themselves at certain ports on the U.S.-Mexico border and were or will be denied access to that process by CBP officials. The court granted summary judgment for the class and declared that the government's denial of inspection and asylum processing to class members who are in the process of arriving in the United States is unlawful, regardless of the purported justification for doing so. The government rescinded the metering policy in November of 2021, shortly after the District Court entered summary judgment. A divided panel of the Ninth Circuit then affirmed in relevant part, holding that an alien arrives in the United States and thus must be inspected and may apply for asylum when the alien, while standing on the Mexico side of the border, encounters a United States official at the border. Held. An alien standing in Mexico does not arrive in the United States by attempting and failing to set foot in this country. An alien arrives in the United States only when he crosses the border. The INA thus neither entitles an alien standing in Mexico to apply for asylum, nor requires an immigration officer to inspect him. This case is not moot. The district court's declaratory judgment, which the Ninth Circuit affirmed, continues to bar the government from using metering to deal with border surges within the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit. The government represents that it would like to resume the use of metering when border conditions warrant it. The controversy remains live because a ruling for the government could reverse the declaratory judgment and thus give the government the effectual relief it seeks. The phrase arrives in the United States in sections 1158 sub-A1 and 1225 sub-A1 carries its ordinary meaning. A person arrives in a geographic location only when he enters it. To arrive is to reach a destination, and the preposition in means within the limits, bounds, or area of a place. A person arrives in a destination when he enters within its area, not before, and that conclusion does not change because someone or something blocks entry. Everyday examples of how people ordinarily use the phrase arrives in confirm this understanding. Several features of statutory context support this ordinary meaning reading. First, other provisions of the INA refer to both actual entrance and attempted entrance into the United States, but sections 1158 sub-A1 and 1225 sub-A1 contain no reference to attempted entry, and this fact signals that Congress enacted the disparate language intentionally and purposefully. Second, the INA elsewhere refers to aliens who arrive near a land border, language Congress could have used but did not use in the provisions at issue. Third, Congress easily could have required inspection of any alien who arrives at or reaches the border, as it did in an earlier provision allowing asylum applications by aliens at a land border or port of entry. Fourth, Congress's 1996 amendment replacing at a land border or port of entry with arrives in the United States suggests that these phrases should not be read to have the same meaning and that the current phrase requires aliens to be present in the United States. Respondents' principal textual argument rests on the canon against surplusage. They observe that Section 1158A1 allows asylum applications by aliens who arrive in the United States, and also by those physically present in the United States, and they argue that the first phrase would be wholly redundant if read to require physical presence. This argument has some force, but does not overcome the arguments pointing the opposite way. The anti-surplusage canon is not an iron rule. Congress sometimes enacts provisions that are superfluous. Here the superfluity is only partial, not total, and it is understandable. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 both created expedited removal, a streamlined process for removal of arriving aliens, and inserted the arrives in language in Section 1158A1 to correspond with the event, arrival, that triggered that new removal process. In any event, the court would choose an interpretation that entails some redundancy over one that contradicts what words usually mean. Even if statutory text and context were not enough, the presumption against extraterritoriality would tip the scale against respondents' interpretation. Nothing in the text of Section 1158-A1 or Sections 1225-A1 and A3 manifests an unmistakable congressional intent to require that aliens be inspected and allowed to apply for asylum while they are outside the United States. The court's interpretation links inspection and the asylum process to what occurs on the U.S. side of the border. Respondents' interpretation focuses on the other side of the border, giving the provisions extra territorial reach. Respondents' remaining arguments fail. First, the court's decision in Sale v. Haitian Centers Council Incorporated, 509 U.S. 155, a Supreme Court case from 1993, forecloses respondents' argument that the government's interpretation violates the nation's obligation under the 1951 Convention relating to the status of refugees, to which the United States acceded in 1968. The text of Article 33 of the Convention, which respondents invoke, cannot reasonably be read to say anything at all about a nation's actions toward aliens outside its own territory. Second, respondents' concern that the government's interpretation will create perverse incentives for illegal entry is overstated. Metering does not permanently bar any alien from arriving and applying for asylum. It merely delays entry, whereas illegal entry carries adverse legal effects, including criminal liability, an ineligibility for asylum and certain government benefits. Regardless, this concern cannot defeat the best reading of the statutory text. Last, respondents' argument that the government might someday prevent all potential arriving asylum applicants from reaching the point where they could file an application addresses a hypothetical future policy, not the rescinded metering policy at issue, which merely delayed entry to improve conditions at certain ports of entry. Reversed and remanded. Justice Alito delivered the opinion of the court in which Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett joined. Justice Thomas filed a concurring opinion. Justice Sordamayor filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Kagan and Jackson joined. Justice Jackson filed a dissenting opinion. Thank you for listening. Please help us by rating and reviewing these podcasts. Anytime you want, just go ahead and do that. Just uh make sure you do it wherever you get your podcasts and maybe a few other places besides that. 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