For people covered by the Trump administration’s southern border asylum restrictions, Friday’s Supreme Court order did not reopen applications. The justices agreed to hear *Mullin v. Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services* on November 13. They did not rule on whether the restrictions are lawful or lift the court order that has kept the asylum portion of the policy in place.
The distinction comes down to two orders from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In August 2025, the court put the asylum portions of a lower court judgment on hold. It left other parts of the judgment in effect, including protections for the individual plaintiffs and class members against removal without access to procedures under the Convention Against Torture. In April 2026, a panel ruled against the administration on the merits, concluding that the power to suspend entry did not give the president authority to bypass the removal procedures Congress set or shut off the plaintiffs’ ability to apply for asylum.
In July, the appeals court withheld its mandate, the formal step that puts its judgment into effect, pending the Supreme Court’s final disposition if the government filed a petition and notified the court in time. The government filed and notified the court on August 24. The government’s petition and the challengers’ response agree on the practical result: the earlier partial stay kept the asylum restrictions in place. Friday’s grant of review did not disturb that arrangement.
The justices took up two questions. The first is whether Presidential Proclamation 10888 and the instructions implementing it are lawful. The administration argues that because granting asylum is discretionary, it can decline to accept applications from people it has already decided to deny as a group. The challengers argue that the discretion to deny an application does not let the government eliminate the opportunity to file one.
The second question concerns what a lower court can do if it finds a violation: whether federal law bars the relief the district court granted to the class as a whole. The justices did not take up the government’s separate question about how the class itself was defined. The Supreme Court docket records the limited grant, so the next thing to look for there is the schedule for briefing and argument.