The Trump administration is contesting a federal judge’s restraining order that halted a new policy which would force migrants to apply for asylum at border checkpoints.
Agency lawyers filed a motion Tuesday evening in the requesting that U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar’s order be suspended. The Justice Department will also file an appeal against the restraining order in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a DOJ official told the Washington Examiner.
The move, if successful, would allow the White House to proceed blocking asylum seekers from applying unless they present themselves at one of the southern border’s 48 ports of entry. The administration would have a new way to deter illegal immigration as around 10,000 migrants who traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border from Central America in caravans consider how to gain entry.
Whereas children and families who unlawfully cross the border are not arrested and are allowed to apply for asylum, the new policy would essentially turn them around and force them to go to an official border crossing to apply for protected status.
The Justice Department told the Washington Examiner earlier this year that the immigration court backlog significantly jumped after President Trump took office, in large part because the Trump administration is returning many of the cases the Obama administration ignored and paused back into active status.
The department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review released data in late March that shows it had 697,777 asylum cases on the docket as of March 31, the halfway point of fiscal 2018.
Due to the sheer volume of applicants, federal agencies who oversee illegal immigrant apprehensions and asylum claims are unable to hold hundreds of thousands of people as they wait — sometimes up to two years — to see if they will be granted permission to stay in the U.S.
The original lawsuit over the asylum policy reform was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and Southern Poverty Law Center.
“And it is absurd that a set of advocacy groups can be found to have standing to sue to stop the entire federal government from acting so that illegal aliens can receive a government benefit to which they are not entitled,” the DOJ and Homeland Security Department said in a joint statement following Tigar’s injunction. “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.”
Both department officials said a president has the legal right to amend immigration levels under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
On Nov. 9, the White House announced a proposal to bar asylum for any person who does not apply at a port of entry, of which there are 200 on the northern and southern borders.
“But aliens who enter the United States unlawfully through the southern border in contravention of this proclamation will be ineligible to be granted asylum,” Trump wrote in the proclamation. “The arrival of large numbers of aliens will contribute to the overloading of our immigration and asylum system and to the release of thousands of aliens into the interior of the United States.”
The move was intended to prevent people in caravans headed to the U.S. from Central America from illegally entering the country and then being permitted to apply for asylum.
Tigar’s temporary ban prevents the White House policy from taking effect through Dec. 19, when he scheduled a second hearing.
Melissa Quinn contributed to this report.
