The Supreme Court has handed the Trump administration a decisive victory at the border, and gun owners should pay close attention. In Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, No. 25-5 (U.S. June 25, 2026), the Court held 6-3 that a noncitizen “arrives in the United States” for purposes of the asylum statute only when he physically enters the country — not when he stands at the threshold and demands admission. A person stopped at the border before he crosses has not arrived, has no statutory right to apply for asylum, and cannot compel a federal officer to inspect and admit him. The ruling reverses the Ninth Circuit and ratifies the practice known as metering. It is, in my judgment, the most consequential decision of the Term for the future of the Second Amendment — precisely because it has nothing directly to do with guns.
The Word the Whole Case Turned On
The asylum provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1158, allows a noncitizen who is “physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States” to apply for asylum. The respondents argued that a migrant standing in Mexico, blocked by a Customs and Border Protection officer, has nonetheless “arrived” and may demand asylum and years of pendency inside the country while his claim is litigated. The Court rejected that reading in plain English. Justice Alito, writing for the majority, refused to torture an ordinary word into an immigration loophole:
A person arrives in a geographical location only when he enters it. To arrive is to reach a destination… . A running back does not arrive in the end zone when he reaches the one-yard line. A guest does not arrive in the house when he knocks on the front door. An army does not arrive in a city by encamping outside its walls, and a letter does not arrive in a mailbox while it remains in the mail carrier’s hand just inches away.
The respondents’ clever move was to argue that the meaning of “arrives in” shifts when someone blocks the way. Justice Alito dispatched it with the same examples turned around: the running back does not score when he is tackled at the one-yard line, and the guest has not arrived when the homeowner locks the door before he can open it. A person arrives in the United States only when he enters it, and the conclusion does not change because the government lawfully blocks his entry. That is textualism doing exactly the work it is supposed to do.
Justice Thomas and the President’s Inherent Power
Justice Thomas concurred to reach a deeper question the majority did not need to decide: whether Congress could constitutionally force the President to admit aliens at all. His answer draws on founding-era understanding of executive power.
The President of the United States has inherent authority to exclude aliens from this country. There is founding-era evidence showing that the executive power in Article II of the Constitution includes the power to deport aliens.
Citing William Blackstone — who explained that the Crown could send “alien friends” home whenever it saw occasion — Justice Thomas reasoned that the power to exclude is an executive power, vested by Article II in the President. Congress, by contrast, holds only an enumerated power to “establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” and the migrants in this case were neither naturalized nor on any path to it. The Necessary and Proper Clause supplies no substitute. A statute commanding the President to bring aliens across the border against his will would therefore exceed Congress’s enumerated powers. That argument is confined to his concurrence, not the holding — but it is the most important sentence in the United States Reports this month for anyone who thinks structurally about constitutional power.
Why a Border Case Is a Gun Case
Here is the connection the gun-control movement would rather you not draw. The Second Amendment is not self-enforcing. It survives only so long as a durable majority of Americans believes in armed self-reliance and votes to protect it. Demographics are therefore not a side issue; they are the issue beneath the issue. When an electorate is remade quickly and at scale, the politics of gun ownership are remade with it.
Look at Virginia — the home of Patrick Henry, George Washington, and the National Rifle Association. It has swung hard toward gun bans in a single generation, and that shift tracks a profound change in who votes there. The lesson is not about any individual immigrant, most of whom are simply seeking a better life. The lesson is about consequences: jurisdictions transformed by mass migration have, with striking regularity, turned against the right to keep and bear arms. A nation that cannot control who enters it cannot, over time, control what its Constitution is permitted to mean.
That is why I have said for years that the most important Second Amendment fight is the one over the border, and why Mullin matters far beyond asylum law. The Court restored the ordinary meaning of a single phrase, and in doing so it defended the structural conditions under which our other rights endure. A right is only as secure as the people willing to vote for it.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.