A federal court has ruled that President Donald Trump overstepped his authority by barring asylum claims at the southern border of the United States, as part of his broader immigration crackdown.
On Wednesday, US District Judge Randolph Moss warned that Trump’s actions threatened to create a “presidentially decreed, alternative immigration system” separate from the laws established by Congress.
The country had previously enshrined the right to asylum in its laws. But on January 20, upon taking office for a second term, President Trump issued a proclamation invoking the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
“This authority,” Trump wrote, “necessarily includes the right to deny the physical entry of aliens into the United States and impose restrictions on access to portions of the immigration system.”
But Judge Moss, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, pushed back on that assertion in his 128-page decision (PDF).
“Nothing in the INA or the Constitution grants the President or his delegees the sweeping authority asserted in the Proclamation,” Moss wrote.
He emphasised that the president had no power to “replace the comprehensive rules and procedures” in US immigration law with an “extra-statutory, extraregulatory regime”.
Asylum is the process by which individuals request protection on foreign soil when they fear persecution or harm. While asylum applications face a high bar for acceptance, successful applicants are allowed to remain in the country.
But Trump has framed immigration across the US’s southern border with Mexico as an “invasion” led by foreign powers.
He has used that rationale to justify the use of emergency powers to suspend rights like asylum.
Judge Moss, however, ruled that suspending asylum could result in significant harms to those facing persecution.
“A substantial possibility exists that continued implementation of the Proclamation during the pendency of an appeal will effectively deprive tens of thousands of individuals of the lawful processes to which they are entitled,” Moss wrote.
Nevertheless, he gave the Trump administration a 14-day window to appeal. The administration is expected to do so.
“A local district court judge has no authority to stop President Trump and the United States from securing our border from the flood of aliens trying to enter illegally,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in response to Wednesday’s ruling. “We expect to be vindicated on appeal.”
In court filings, the administration had also argued that it alone had the right to determine whether or not the US was facing invasion.
“The determination that the United States is facing an invasion is an unreviewable political question,” government lawyers wrote.
Judge Moss expressed sympathy with another administration argument that the asylum processing system had simply become swamped with applications.
“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, he concluded, US laws did not award President Trump “the unilateral authority to limit the rights of aliens present in the United States to apply for asylum”.
The ruling comes as the result of a class-action complaint filed by immigrant rights groups, including the Florence Project, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and RAICES.
The American Civil Liberties Union applauded Wednesday’s decision as an important step in protecting Congress’s powers to pass laws – and protecting immigrants’ rights.
“The president cannot wipe away laws passed by Congress simply by claiming that asylum seekers are invaders,” ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt said to US media.
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