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A heated conflict among Supreme Court justices emerged on Thursday following two immigration decisions, with Justice Samuel Alito claiming his liberal colleagues had caught him off guard.

The tension arose when Alito revealed the court’s ruling in an asylum case, taking a strict view of what constitutes a migrant “arriving” in the United States under federal law — a perspective that greatly complicates the eligibility of asylum applicants who journeyed through Mexico and South America, unless they actually step onto American territory, according to CNN’s Joan Biskupic.

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“The tensionReally reached a peak, occurring when Justice Samuel Alito delivered three distinct opinions from the bench, the first being fairly standard, while the other two concerned immigration and refugee rights,” Biskupic reported from outside the court. “What transpired in the courtroom revealed not only the division but also the tension between the two factions, with Justice Alito, from the bench, accusing his liberal colleague, Sonia Sotomayor, of catching him off guard when she began reading her dissent from the bench.”

Usually, it’s the justice who is reading the majority opinion that is the only one speaking,” she added. “If someone reads a dissent in this case, from the liberals truly expressing their protest regarding what has occurred in this refugee matter.

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Over roughly 10 minutes, Sotomayorreferenced the 1939 journey of over 900 Jewish refugees who were denied entry to Cuba and the United States, many of whom eventually died in the Holocaust, and connected this past to global agreements that safeguard individuals escaping persecution. She contended that the decision undermined this heritage and outlined the abuse and exploitation experienced by migrants stuck near the border. Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson supported her.

Then Justice Alito, who is about to read another opinion, pauses and says, ‘If I had known that the dissent was going to deliver that opinion from the bench, I would have said more, I would have explained more about why we made the decision we did,’ ” Biskupic stated. “It was a very harsh reaction to what we had just heard.

Alito continued ahead, issuing a second 6-3 decision that limits the federal government’s application of Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from Haiti and Syria — yet another major victory for the administration.

The TPS decision might lead to immediate effects for refugees who have legally resided in the U.S. for several months or years. Biskupic noted that whether individuals can now be deported depends on their particular status and where they were in the application procedure, but the ruling opens a way for the administration to cancel protections it has aimed to eliminate for a long time.