Congress must modernize asylum policy before the justices upend it

An immigration case currently in front of the Supreme Court may unintentionally nudge asylum policy toward more illegal crossings.

In one of several important immigration-related cases, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in March in Mullins v. Al Otro Lado, about whether the U.S. government can prevent people seeking asylum from crossing into the U.S. at ports of entry. Traditionally, asylum seekers have been allowed into the country to file their petitions from U.S. soil.

The decision will likely affect whether more people will try to cross into the U.S. between ports of entry. But fortunately, the U.S. doesn’t need the Supreme Court to build a modern immigration approach that considers both security and human dignity. The ultimate power to decide how we should manage asylum at the border resides in Congress, not with the various and at times contradictory decisions by courts or changes in the Oval Office.

Known as a “metering” case, Mullins v. Al Otro Lado addresses a policy initiated by the Obama administration in 2016 and continued in the first Trump administration of limiting the number of people who can seek asylum each day at ports of entry. Although it is not in effect now, the current Trump administration wants the option to reinstate the policy if large numbers of asylum-seekers should again arrive at the border.

While we wait for the Supreme Court ruling later this year, we can get a sense of the justices’ thinking from their questions and comments during oral arguments. They focused on whether the law’s requirement that the migrant must “arrive” in the U.S. to request asylum means that they must be physically on U.S. soil.

If the........

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