U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights, has filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn a Ninth Circuit decision regarding asylum eligibility at the U.S.–Mexico border.
The Ninth Circuit ruling found that an individual stopped on the Mexico side of the border could be considered as having “arrived in the United States” for asylum purposes, even without physically entering the country. Following Senator Cruz’s cert-stage brief last year, the Supreme Court has agreed to review this case.
Senator Cruz’s amicus brief argues that policy changes under President Biden led to increased challenges at the border. He wrote: “The Biden Administration invited chaos at the border by abandoning metering in November 2021. By May 2023, border processing facilities had ‘reach[ed] overcapacity.’ The system was overwhelmed. At one point, the Biden Administration lost track of nearly 85,000 sponsored alien children, underscoring a systemic inability to manage migration at the scale the Biden Administration was facilitating.”
Cruz further stated: “The Ninth Circuit’s ruling below, if not reversed, will entrench that chaos by barring the executive branch from utilizing metering to pace the flow of aliens into the United States. In doing so, that court badly misconstrued plain statutory text, usurped the policymaking authority of the political branches, granted millions of aliens a right to seek asylum never authorized by Congress, and made a hash of other provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act.”
He concluded: “At every turn, the Ninth Circuit’s decision defies text and common sense, and—if not reversed—it will yield untold chaos at the southern border.”
Senator Cruz recently secured reelection in 2024 after defeating Colin Allred with 53.1% of votes compared to Allred's 44.6%.
