The Supreme Court issued a rare public clarification Friday after an unusually tense exchange between Justices Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor following a closely watched immigration ruling that handed the Trump administration a major legal victory.
The dispute arose after the court released its 6-3 decision in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, which allows federal immigration officials to turn away asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border before they physically enter the United States.
Justice Samuel Alito authored the majority opinion, concluding that migrants have not legally “arrived” in the United States until they are physically present inside the country. The ruling clears the way for the Trump administration to resume its “turn back” policy at ports of entry.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by the court’s two other liberal justices, sharply dissented from the decision and took the uncommon step of reading portions of her 35-page dissent aloud from the bench.
In her dissent, Sotomayor argued the ruling permits the executive branch to bypass congressionally established asylum procedures by preventing migrants from stepping onto U.S. soil.
“The Court today holds that the Executive Branch may circumvent all these mandatory procedures by having U.S. immigration officers stand at the border and physically block noncitizens from setting a foot onto U.S. soil,” Sotomayor said from the bench.
Following the release of the opinion, Alito remarked that he would have added more to his own bench statement had he known Sotomayor planned to read her dissent publicly.
“There’s much that I would have added to my bench statement had I known there would be a dissent read,” Alito said.
The comment fueled speculation about tensions among the justices and prompted widespread media coverage.
On Friday, however, the Supreme Court issued an unusual public statement seeking to clarify the situation.
“Justice Alito was notified in advance by Justice Sotomayor’s chambers that she would be reading a dissent from the bench,” a Supreme Court spokesperson said in a statement to CNN. “It was a misunderstanding on Justice Alito’s part.”
The clarification appeared intended to defuse suggestions of an internal dispute over court procedures.
The case centered on whether migrants seeking asylum have legally “arrived” in the United States while standing at the border or only after physically entering the country. The conservative majority concluded the statute requires physical presence inside the United States before asylum processing requirements apply.
Writing for the majority, Alito described the issue as a “straightforward question” of statutory interpretation.
Sotomayor strongly disagreed, warning that the decision allows immigration officials to deny asylum seekers access to legal protections even when ports of entry have the capacity to process their claims, per the Daily Mail.
The exchange marked one of the more public disagreements among Supreme Court justices in recent years. Although justices occasionally read dissents from the bench to emphasize disagreements, public statements clarifying interactions between members of the court are uncommon.
The incident also follows another recent controversy involving Sotomayor. Earlier this year, she publicly apologized after making comments about Justice Brett Kavanaugh that she later described as inappropriate and hurtful.
Despite Friday’s clarification, the immigration ruling remains one of the Supreme Court’s most significant decisions of the term, reinforcing executive authority over asylum processing at the southern border and delivering a major legal victory for the Trump administration.
