Federal judge blocks Trump asylum ban on migrants illegally entering from Mexico
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/20/blow-trumps-immigration-agenda-federal-judge-blocks-asylum-ban-migrants-who-enter-illegally-mexico/?utm_term=.48fb333201fd
In a ruling late Monday, U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar of San Francisco issued a nationwide restraining order barring enforcement of the policy announced by President Trump on
Nov. 8, which he billed as an urgent attempt to halt the flow of thousands of asylum-seeking families across the border each month.
The rule pursued by the Trump administration would allow only people who cross at legal checkpoints to request asylum. Those entering elsewhere would be able to seek a temporary
form of protection that is harder to win and doesn’t yield full citizenship. The changes would amount to a transformation of long-established asylum procedures, codified both at
the international level and by Congress.
“Whatever the scope of the President’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” wrote the judge, who was
nominated to the federal bench in 2012 by President Barack Obama. Tigar reasoned that the “failure to comply with entry requirements such as arriving at a designated port of
entry should bear little, if any, weight in the asylum process.”
As a result of Tigar’s restraining order, migrants may once again seek asylum either at legal entry points or after crossing illegally onto U.S. soil. Several thousand migrants are now
waiting to cross a legal entry point at San Ysidro, across from Tijuana. Many are from a caravan that drew Trump’s wrath in the weeks leading up to the midterm elections, when he
made illegal immigration his closing argument and asserted without evidence that the caravan included “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners.”
The challenge to the asylum ban was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups on behalf of East Bay Sanctuary Covenant. The order reflects the
judge’s view that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits, and would suffer irreparable injury from the executive action.
In a hearing Monday, Scott Stewart, a lawyer for the Justice Department, spoke of a “crushing strain” of migrants attempting to cross the border illegally. He alleged that most asylum
claims were “ultimately meritless.” But the judge seemed skeptical, observing that border apprehensions are near historic lows and that, regardless, federal law says all people on
U.S. soil can apply for asylum, no matter how they arrived.
Tigar voiced concern for the fate of asylum seekers under the changes. The administration’s rule, he observed, would force individuals “to choose between violence at the border,
violence at home, or giving up a pathway to refugee status.” And in his decision, he wrote that the government’s argument that the manner of entry can be the lone factor rendering a
migrant ineligible for asylum “strains credulity."
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