A federal judge in Washington ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration cannot categorically deny entry to people crossing the southern border to claim asylum, 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.”
Despite the sweeping terms of the order, Judge Moss postponed them from taking effect for two weeks, to give the Trump administration time to appeal.
The case focused on Mr. Trump’s proclamation — titled “guaranteeing the states protection against invasion” — to suspend the nation’s refugee admissions program and override immigration and asylum procedures that Congress set in the Immigration and Nationality Act.
The immigrant rights groups behind the lawsuit have 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.”
Many of those people had experienced political persecution in their home countries of Afghanistan, Cuba, Egypt, Peru and Turkey, according to court filings. Their lawyers said some were subjected to “traditional torture” at the hands of those governments.
The lawsuit aimed to halt the rollout of Mr. Trump’s policy, which lawyers said put the asylum seekers at imminent risk of being sent back to the nations they had fled.
As part of the ruling on Wednesday, Judge Moss also agreed to certify asylum seekers in the case as a class, an important win for those individuals after the Supreme Court last week limited the power of individual judges to issue nationwide injunctions. Class actions, involving many people in a similar situation, were not affected by the court’s ruling on birthright citizenship.
“This ruling means that asylum will once again be available for those fleeing horrific danger and in doing so reaffirms that the president must respect the laws Congress enacts,” Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who argued the case, said. “The decision will literally mean the difference between life and death for many families escaping religious and other forms of persecution.”
Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the federal courts, including the legal disputes over the Trump administration’s agenda.
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