An appeals court ruled on Friday that President Donald Trump’s Day One executive order restricting asylum access at the southern border is illegal.
A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit determined that immigrants have the right to request asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border under federal law and that the Immigration and Nationality Act can’t be invoked to suspend that right.
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The federal appeals court also concluded that Trump cannot deport immigrants to countries where they will be persecuted or strip them of their protections against removal from the United States.
“The power by proclamation to temporarily suspend the entry of specified foreign individuals into the United States does not contain implicit authority to override the INA’s mandatory process to summarily remove foreign individuals,” Judge J. Michelle Childs wrote in the ruling.
Childs was appointed to the bench by former President Joe Biden. Trump and former President Barack Obama appointed the other two judges.
“We conclude that the INA’s text, structure, and history make clear that in supplying power to suspend entry by Presidential proclamation, Congress did not intend to grant the Executive the expansive removal authority it asserts,” the opinion stated.
The ruling sets up a potential legal showdown at the Supreme Court if the Trump administration decides to go that route. The federal government can also ask the full appeals court to reconsider the ruling. The order doesn’t take effect until after the court reconsiders. The ruling will likely be appealed.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters she was not surprised by the ruling.
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“We have liberal judges across the country who are acting against this president for political purposes,” she said. “They are not acting as true litigators of the law. They are looking at these cases from a political lens.”
After he was inaugurated as president last year, Trump ordered an asylum ban as part of his crackdown on illegal immigration. He deemed the Biden-era crisis at the southern border a national emergency and used his executive authority to rectify the matter.
