The Brief

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday handed the Trump administration a tool that could make it far more difficult for asylum seekers to enter the United States.

Asylum is a form of legal protection available to people fleeing persecution in their home countries if they meet certain criteria. Under U.S. law, an asylum seeker who "arrives in" the U.S. is entitled to apply for asylum and generally cannot be removed from the country until their asylum application is processed. 

By a 6-3 vote, the high court ruled that federal law allows the government to stop asylum seekers from physically setting foot in the country, effectively keeping them from applying for asylum. 

The Obama administration was the first to try stemming the flow of asylum seekers that way. But the lower courts blocked the policy on grounds that it violated federal law by denying asylum to people who otherwise would have qualified for it, had they been permitted to literally put one foot over the border.

The Trump administration, however, sought to revive the policy, contending that the lower court's ruling "deprives the Executive Branch of a critical tool for addressing border surges and preventing overcrowding at ports of entry." And on Thursday, the Supreme Court agreed.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito ruled that because asylum seekers are not in the U.S. when they are turned away at the border, they did not "arrive in" the country. Therefore, he continued, the legal protections for asylum seekers have not kicked in.

Writing for the liberal dissenters, Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that Border Patrol agents speak with all immigrants at legal entry points and speaking with an agent is effectively the first step in "arriving in" the U.S.

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This story first appeared on The LA Local.

A fire at the Lineage cold storage facility in Boyle Heights was knocked down​ Wednesday evening, a week after solar panels on its roof ignited and blanketed the region in harmful smoke.

The Los Angeles Fire Department announced the fire was extinguished at 5:58 p.m., and said there were no active flames and no threat of fire spread.

“While the fire has been knocked down, debris within the structure continues to smolder as crews transition into the overhaul phase of operations,” LAFD posted on Instagram.

“The chief’s goal was to have us put this out today,” Milo Cope, a public information officer with the Los Angeles Fire Department, told Boyle Heights Beat on Wednesday morning.

“They’ll manage tearing this building apart and we can stand by for any small smoldering fires that need to be addressed,” Cope said. 

Firefighters will now begin handing over operations to the owners of the building. 

The fire at the cold storage facility began burning last Wednesday on a solar panel farm on the warehouse’s roof that later burned through the rubber insulation around the building. It reignited on Friday, with the city of Los Angeles and the governor’s office declaring an emergency the following day. 

Since the fire broke out, residents living closest to the facility have endured smoky conditions that they say have disrupted daily life, affected their health and limited their ability to work as firefighters continued battling the blaze.

Mayor Karen Bass on Sunday said a mandatory evacuation “is not necessary;” state guidelines tie evacuation orders to immediate threats to life or property. For those who wish to voluntarily leave, “we have the facilities for you,” she said, pointing to the smoke relief shelter available. 

She and LAFD Fire Chief Jaime Moore have repeatedly advised residents sensitive to smoke or who have respiratory concerns to stay indoors, close their windows, wear masks when they do need to go outside and head to established shelters if they need more relief.

Councilmember Ysabel Jurado on Monday called for the public release of air quality and environmental testing results in English and Spanish and for a full report detailing the materials that burned at the facility. Boyle Heights residents, Jurado said, “deserve the very basic right to know what is in the air.” 

On Tuesday, Supervisor Hilda Solis urged agencies to be diligent in the cleanup process. “Some of our communities have become particularly alarmed about being the dumping ground for hazardous or toxic material…,” Solis said.

Poor air quality on Sunday led several schools hosting summer programs to announce they would move classes elsewhere on Monday as a precaution. The school relocation will last until Friday, said officials from LAUSD’s Region East.

Students from Dena Elementary and Dacotah Early Education Center were relocated to Sunrise Elementary, Eastman Early Education Center students moved to Humphreys Elementary, and Stevenson Middle School students were moved to Belvedere Middle School, according to the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The Supreme Court gave the Trump administration the green light to begin mass deportations of people who have been living and working legally in the United States for years, some even decades. By a 6-to-3 vote along ideological lines, the court's conservative majority ruled that the President has virtually unrestrained power to end the Temporary Protected Status program, known as TPS.

Congress enacted the TPS law in 1990 to allow fully vetted and eligible migrants to live and work legally in the U.S. if they cannot return safely to their home countries because of natural disasters, armed conflicts, and other extraordinary conditions. The Department of Homeland Security designates which foreign countries qualify for TPS.

Since the law's enactment, every President, Republican and Democrat, has embraced it, except Trump. He, in contrast, is trying to end the temporary protected status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants. And on Thursday, the high court gave him the tools to do it.

Writing for the court majority, Justice Samuel Alito that under the TPS law, the president has unreviewable authority to end the program, without intervention from the courts.

There are more than a dozen countries that have been designated with TPS, including the two in this case— Haiti, with 330,000 displaced persons living legally in the U.S., and Syria with roughly 3,800. The U.S. State Department currently warns Americans in the strongest terms not to go to these countries to these countries or because of the dangers of crime, terrorism, kidnapping, unrest, and limited health care. The court's decision means that the President can end the protected status of Haitians and Syrians without the possibility of judicial review. Migrants living legally in the U.S. from those countries will likely revert to illegal status, meaning they will lose their jobs and face deportation, with many of them forced to leave their American-born children behind.

The Trump administration had attempted to strip TPS from 13 of the 17 countries that had it before the second term began. As for the remaining four countries that still have TPS—El Salvador, Lebanon, Sudan, and Ukraine, they may well lose their TPS when they come up for renewal this fall.

Dissenting from today's decision were the court's three liberal justices.

Reaction to the decision was fast and furious among immigrant rights groups. "Revoking TPS protection is not just cruel; it is economic self-sabotage that will rip billions out of the U.S. economy and destabilize communities nationwide," said Todd SchulteFWD.us, a bipartisan group that advocates for immigration reform, said in a statement.

According to the group, 200,000 Haitian TPS holders are in the U.S. workforce, including 15,000 agricultural workers, 13,000 nursing assistants, and 8,000 caregivers. What's more, the group says, TPS holders generate an estimated $5.9 billion for the U.S. economy each year and annually pay a total of $1.5 billion in federal and state taxes.

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Pedro Jauregui, with the organization U.S. Vets in Long Beach, Calif., once spent a whole year getting one unhoused veteran to come in from the cold.

"The first time I met him, I had to walk away 'cause he gave me some choice words, waved a one finger at me and said he was gonna kill me," Jauregui said.

But a year of regular visits, including plenty of hot coffee and doughnuts, and Jauregui convinced the vet to come indoors. After that, he sobered up and started using his VA benefits for college.

"We build relationships and then we use whatever we can to get the veteran the help he needs," Jauregui said.

More than 30,000 U.S. military veterans are unhoused, according to the latest government data from an annual one-night "point in time count." That number is down significantly in the past decade, which most experts credit to a straightforward combination of robust funding and a philosophy focused on offering housing without prerequisites, called housing first.

While the Trump administration has promised new housing for vets, President Trump also signed an executive order last year titled "Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets," which leans heavily toward institutionalizing unhoused people against their will. This winter, NPR obtained slides describing a proposed VA plan called "Safe Harbor," which would include veterans in that shift to involuntary treatment. Then, in March, the VA put out a memorandum of understanding with the Justice Department about state court guardianship for veterans.

But VA Secretary Doug Collins says the memorandum has nothing to do with the Safe Harbor proposal.

"We have veterans — not homeless, just veterans — who are in our facilities," he said at the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans annual conference last month. "They have no family, they have no representation, and they really are not in a position to actually make competent choices for their own healthcare."

Collins said the memorandum will help those veterans get important medical decisions made.

"The court will find somebody in the community, not a VA employee, not a VA attorney, [who] will then represent that veteran with the respect to their medical well-being, moving them along, getting them the healthcare that they need," he said.

Collins says the leaked slide deck describing project Safe Harbor was still just a proposal, and he accused the lead Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Mark Takano, of distorting it.

"Somebody in our building leaked it to the Hill. And guess what? Rep. Takano happily put out information that wasn't correct," Collins said. "I've got veterans who are sitting in hospitals who can't make competent choices for themselves to get better … next-level care. We're helping them do that. … When it came out that we were attacking homeless and going after homeless, I wanted to puke," he said.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins in the Oval Office at the White House on Jan. 29 in Washington, D.C.

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Takano claimed in a statement to NPR that the VA is withholding information about the program from the public.

"I've given VA multiple opportunities at public hearings and in congressional requests to clarify its intent, and it refuses to do so," Takano said. "Doug Collins repeatedly fails to recognize or plan for the risks associated with guardianship, an industry rife with fraud and exploitation."

Takano said his staff will continue to collect information from whistleblowers about courts putting veterans under guardianship.

A VA spokesman reiterated to NPR that the guardianship memorandum is not connected to the leaked "Safe Harbor" plan, which echoed President Trump's executive order about institutionalizing unhoused people. Several veterans advocacy groups have expressed skepticism.

"I like to think that it's altruistic, like they really wanna help veterans in hospital situations have the decision-making skills that they need. But the fact that it also applies to homeless veterans and those veterans at risk of homelessness, I think, is really a slippery slope," said Jess Finucan, director of policy and advocacy at Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, says the veterans service community is worried.

"What the administration has said publicly on this proposal is at odds with the documentation on the project and its pilot program. That original documentation was directly linked to the president's executive order, calling for involuntary commitment of people experiencing homelessness. I think it's disingenuous for anybody from the VA to say that this was meant for a completely different population," she said.

What proud vet wants to be a burden?

Back in Long Beach, NPR recently rode along with Pedro Jauregui and Veronica Hood, from the group U.S. Vets, as they did street outreach. They both served in the military, but at this point they've spent nearly as many years serving unhoused vets.

"Rather than make it something traumatic where we're forcing you into it, let outreach workers like us build the relationship," Jauregui said.

Their aim was to track down an 87-year-old Navy veteran named Curtis Ervin who has been sleeping in his truck. Even though he's probably been uhoused for decades, Ervin is reluctant to accept offers of housing, Hood said.

"He might think he'd be a burden on people. So he really just wants to do it on his own," she said.

U.S. Navy veteran Curtis Ervin, 87, was homeless for decades before being moved into housing this year.

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"And what proud man or vet wants to be a burden on anybody?" Jauregui added from the passenger seat.

After driving to a few different places where unhoused vets camp out, Hood spots Ervin's maroon pickup parked near a Jack in the Box. She hands him a warm packed meal and some water through the driver's side window.

Ervin said he joined the Navy in 1956.

"I was a diesel engine mechanic. And on the ship, that means you're everything," Ervin said.

His last ship was the USS Bainbridge, a nuclear-powered destroyer.

 "I was aboard when they brought the nuclear fleet to Vietnam, when they brought the [USS aircraft carrier] Enterprise, my ship escorted her. We went around Africa," he recalls.

Ervin said he's been bouncing between hospitals for years, and he can't remember the last time he had a home. Sleeping in a seat has made his legs swell up.

"Right now I'm in the truck. For the last two, three years, I've been dancing from hospital to hospital. … I finally got out because they tried to keep me," Ervin said.

He doesn't like being ordered around.

"I got enough of that in the Navy," he said, even though he's been out for 60 years.

But Veronica Hood seems to have built a rapport, and Ervin said he'll be here tomorrow to go with her to the hospital, and then get a roof over his head.

" I have never used the VA, but I am scheduled to go to the VA tomorrow," he said, "and I hope they don't keep me there."

Driving back, Hood and Jauregui said they know some unhoused people are a danger to themselves and maybe others, but for the most part, they wouldn't want to see vets forced into treatment.

"As you saw with Ervin, it could be both beneficial or it could be extremely traumatic," said Hood.

"My husband is also a veteran. He just retired, and I would be worried for him, too, if I wasn't around, if someone would show him the same compassion. It's how I would want Pedro to be treated. I'm sure how he would want me to be treated," she said

By phone after the visit, Hood told NPR that Curtis Ervin came in the next day, and he's now in housing for the first time in more years than he can remember.
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