Supreme Court Gives Trump a Win on Immigration

The latest Supreme Court decision on immigration has gone President Trump's way. In a 7-2 ruling on Thursday, the court made it easier to deport asylum seekers at the border, reports USA Today. The decision means that people whose requests for asylum are rejected in their initial screenings aren't entitled to plead their case before a federal judge, per the AP. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer agreed with the decision but didn't join Samual Alito's opinion because they say the ruling should be applied more narrowly than Alito suggests.

• Majority: Congress acted properly in creating a system “for weeding out patently meritless claims and expeditiously removing the aliens making such claims from the country,” Alito wrote.
• Dissent: “Today’s decision handcuffs the Judiciary’s ability to perform its constitutional duty to safeguard individual liberty," wrote Sotomayor.
• Impact: "The case, which concerns the fundamental question of who is entitled to seek habeas corpus, will affect thousands of asylum seekers," per the New York Times.
• The individual: The case was brought by Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam of Sri Lanka, who was arrested near the Mexican border, reports NBC News. He argued that, as a member of the Tamil minority, he faced persecution or worse if sent home. He said he was once kidnapped and brutally beaten, though he could not identify his attackers (he was blindfolded) and thus say for sure why they beat him.

(More US Supreme Court stories.)