Federal judge blocks Trump’s asylum ban
Temporary order: Take asylum claims at any entry point.
Decision thwarts White House, says president violated “clear command” from Congress to allow illegal migrants to apply.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the White House from denying asylum to migrants who crossed the southern border illegally, saying the president violated a “clear command” from Congress to allow them to apply.
In a ruling late Monday, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar of San Francisco issued a nationwide restraining order barring enforcement of the policy announced by President Donald Trump on Nov. 8, which he billed as an urgent attempt to halt the flow of thousands of asylum-seeking families across the border each month.
The rule pursued by the Trump administration would allow only people who cross at legal checkpoints to request asylum. Those entering elsewhere would be able to seek a temporary form of protection that is harder to win and doesn’t yield full citizenship. The changes would amount to a transformation of long-established asylum procedures, codified both at the international level and by Congress.
“Whatever the scope of the President’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” wrote the judge, who was nominated to the federal bench in 2012 by President Barack Obama. Tigar reasoned that the “failure to comply with entry requirements such as arriving at a designated port of entry should bear little, if any, weight in the asylum process.”
As a result of Tigar’s restraining order, migrants may once again seek asylum either at legal entry points or after crossing illegally onto U.S. soil.
Several thousand migrants are now waiting to cross a legal entry point at San Ysidro, California, across from Tijuana. Many are from a caravan that drew Trump’s wrath in the weeks leading up to the midterm elections, when he made illegal immigration his closing argument and asserted without evidence that the caravan included “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners.” Trump deployed thousands of active-duty troops and coils of concertina wire to the border. Military officials indicated they are weighing when and whether to start redeploying some of those troops.
Tigar said the president could not shift asylum policy on his own. His order will remain in effect until Dec. 19, at which point the court will consider arguments for a permanent order.
The Trump administration said Tuesday it will continue to press the matter in court and signaled that this defeat could be temporary, alluding to a 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court in June that upheld a revised version of Trump’s travel ban.
“As the Supreme Court affirmed this summer, Congress has given the President broad authority to limit or even stop the entry of aliens into this country,” the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security said in a joint statement that called the lawsuit “absurd.” “We look forward to continuing to defend the Executive Branch’s legitimate and well-reasoned exercise of its authority to address the crisis at our southern border.”
In Mexico, thousands of Central American migrants are waiting in a crowded sports complex and squalid shelters to head north into the United States, where thousands of armed American soldiers are guarding the line to deter them from crossing.
As the hearing was underway Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the government had received reports that the migrant caravan was considering rushing the border.
But a spokesman for the migrant caravan said the Central Americans were waiting peacefully in Mexico and had no intention of forcing their way into the United States.