Supreme Court Rules Refugees Turned Away At The Border Were Never Really In America To Begin With, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That A Person Speaking To A U.S. Agent On U.S. Soil Had Set Foot In The United States

WASHINGTON. In a decision hailed by the White House as a long-overdue clarification of where America is, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday by a vote of 6 to 3 that asylum seekers turned away at the southern border have not legally arrived in the United States, and therefore cannot ask the United States for anything.

The ruling resolves a long-standing concern within the administration that a person fleeing persecution who walked up to a federal agent, stood on federal soil, and spoke words to that agent might be considered, in some technical sense, present in the country.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito explained that because the migrants were physically prevented from setting foot past the border, they had never "arrived in" the nation as federal law requires, and so the protections Congress wrote for arriving asylum seekers had simply never switched on. Legal observers described the reasoning as a breakthrough in the field of geography, in which a location is now determined not by where a body is standing but by whether the government has decided to notice it.

"America's doors are closed fully to asylum seekers," White House policy advisor Stephen Miller told reporters, adding that the administration had already secured agreements to ship those seekers to other countries whose doors America considers closed as well. Sources within the administration confirmed that the United States remains deeply committed to welcoming the world's huddled masses, provided they huddle somewhere else.

The policy was first attempted under the Obama administration and struck down by lower courts, which had found the novel theory that a person at the border is not at the border to be inconsistent with the existence of the border. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissenting, noted that border agents speak with every migrant who reaches a legal crossing, and that being spoken to by a United States official is, if anything, a fairly strong indication that one has reached the United States.

Miller said the ruling was only a beginning, telling reporters that "this country doesn't have a future if we don't end birthright citizenship," a question the justices are expected to take up as early as next week, at which point the administration hopes to resolve whether children born in American hospitals were ever really in America either.

At press time, several families who had walked the length of a continent to reach the United States were being gently informed that they had not yet gone anywhere.