A federal judge blocked a Trump administration policy barring migrants who cross the US-Mexico border from seeking asylum, issuing a major blow to President Donald Trump, who has sought to seal off access to protections on the border.
In a sharply worded decision issued Wednesday, US District Judge Randolph Moss found that the administration overstepped its authority by bypassing immigration law.
“The President cannot adopt an alternative immigration system, which supplants the statutes that Congress has enacted,” Moss wrote.
The ruling – targeting a signature element of Trump’s agenda – comes as the administration touts low border crossings. Current and former Homeland Security officials have previously cited the clampdown on the US southern border as contributing to a sharp decline in unlawful crossings. In June, the US Border Patrol recorded just over 6,000 encounters, according to federal data.
Earlier this year, immigrant rights advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, sued over a presidential proclamation that effectively shut down asylum at the southern border. The challengers argued that the proclamation endangered thousands of lives by preventing people from seeking refuge in the US.
The lawsuit tested whether presidential power can override protections guaranteed by Congress for people fleeing persecution and marked one of the most sweeping efforts by the Trump administration to restrict immigration.
“This an enormous victory for those fleeing danger and the rule of law,” said ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt. “The court properly recognized that the president cannot simply ignore laws passed by Congress.”
The judge said that neither immigration statutes nor the Constitution give the president power to unilaterally deny access to asylum for people who have already entered the US, no matter how they arrived. “Nothing in the (Immigration and Nationality Act) or the Constitution grants the President or his delegees the sweeping authority asserted in the Proclamation and implementing guidance,” the ruling states.
Moss stayed his decision for 14 days. The administration is expected to appeal.
CNN has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
The Trump administration argued that the president has broad authority under federal law to suspend the entry of people deemed detrimental to US interest – especially in what it described as a national security and public health emergency at the border.
Tensions flared during oral arguments in April in a packed federal courtroom in Washington, DC. DOJ lawyers argued that the proclamation was unreviewable under the immigration statutes in question. Moss pressed that argument, at one point posing a hypothetical: Would a presidential order to shoot migrants at the border be legally immune from judicial review? DOJ attorney Drew Ensign acknowledged that such an order would raise constitutional issues, but hesitated to say what legal limits might apply—drawing a pointed rebuke from the bench.
The plaintiffs had highlighted that at least two of their clients had already been deported under the policy. While those individuals had expressed a desire to seek asylum, government attorneys argued that they had not established an imminent intent to file claims – raising further questions about who the policy actually applied to and how it was enforced.
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