Judge Rejects Trump’s Attempt to Stop Asylum Claims at Border
A federal judge in Washington ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration cannot categorically deny asylum claims from people crossing the southern border, striking down a change made on President Trump’s first day in office.
The ruling rejected the idea, repeatedly put forth by the president, that such extraordinary powers were justified to curtail what Mr. Trump has called an invasion of the United States by immigrants crossing the southern border.
In a hefty 128-page opinion, Judge Randolph D. Moss of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that the Constitution and federal immigration law did not afford Mr. Trump the expansive authorities he claimed.
“The court recognizes that the executive branch faces enormous challenges in preventing and deterring unlawful entry into the United States and in adjudicating the overwhelming backlog of asylum claims of those who have entered the country,” he wrote.
But neither the Constitution nor the current law governing asylum seekers, Judge Moss wrote, could “be read to grant the president or his delegees authority to adopt an alternative immigration system which supplants the statutes that Congress has enacted.”
Despite the sweeping terms of the order, Judge Moss postponed them from taking effect for two weeks to allow for an appeal. As the administration has sought maximum authority to curb immigration, the matter appeared likely to eventually reach the Supreme Court.
The case focused on a Trump proclamation — titled “Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion” — seeking to suspend the nation’s refugee admissions program and override procedures that Congress set in the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Under the president’s proclamation, the government has effectively shut down avenues at the southern border for people fleeing persecution or torture to apply for asylum and remain in the United States. At the same time, Mr. Trump has moved to suspend other programs granting certain groups temporary protected status.
The immigrant rights groups behind the lawsuit argued that the Trump administration had usurped Congress’s power to make laws governing the system for asylum. They brought a legal challenge on behalf of more than a dozen people who had been detained or removed from the United States without their asylum claims being addressed.
“Under the proclamation, the government is doing just what Congress by statute decreed that the United States must not do,” the immigrant rights groups wrote in their complaint. “It is returning asylum seekers — not just single adults, but families too — to countries where they face persecution or torture, without allowing them to invoke the protections Congress has provided.”
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