PHOENIX – A US judge blocked the Trump administration’s most sweeping set of asylum restrictions on Friday less than two weeks before President-elect Joe Biden took office.
The rules would go into effect Monday. The injunction has limited immediate impact as the government largely suspended asylum policy at the US-Mexico border during the coronavirus pandemic, citing public health concerns.
Still, enforcing the rules by some who can still apply for asylum would have felt and make it significantly more difficult for all asylum seekers once the pandemic-related measures are lifted.
President Donald Trump’s administration argued that the measures were an appropriate response to a system rife with abuse and overwhelmed by unworthy claims.
They tried to redefine how people qualify for asylum and similar forms of humanitarian protection when persecuted at home. The restrictions would have broadened the grounds for a judge to consider asylum claims “frivolous” and would prohibit applicants from ever getting protection in the US
US District Judge James Donato in San Francisco sided with advocacy groups suing, saying Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf had no authority to impose the sweeping rules.
Donato, who was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama in 2013, wrote that Wolf’s appointment was against a set order of succession. He said it was the fifth time a court ruled against Homeland Security on the same grounds.
“The government has recycled the exact same legal and factual claims from previous cases, as if they had not been properly rejected in well-founded opinions by various courts,” Donato wrote. “This is a troubling litigation strategy. In fact, the government keeps crashing the same car into a gate, hoping it would one day break through. “
Donato said his ruling applies nationally because limiting reach “would lead to a fragmented and disjointed patchwork of immigration policies.”
It was not immediately clear whether the Trump administration would make an emergency call. Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Friday.
Aaron Frankel, a plaintiffs’ attorney, has called the rules “nothing short of an attempt to end the asylum system.”
Asylum is a legal protection intended for people fleeing persecution on the basis of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a social group. Any foreigner who steps into US territory has a legal right to apply for asylum, under US asylum law and international treaty obligations.
The rules would limit the types of persecution and the severity of the threats for which asylum is granted. Applicants seeking protection based on their gender or those who claim to be targeted by gangs, “rogue” government officials or “non-governmental organizations” are unlikely to be eligible for asylum.
Immigration judges would be urged to be more selective in granting asylum applications and allow them to refuse most applications without a hearing.
They would also have weighed several new factors against an applicant’s ability to receive protection, including failure to pay taxes. Criminal records would still count for an asylum seeker, even if their conviction were dropped.
Under pandemic-related measures in place since March, about nine out of ten people apprehended at the border are immediately expelled for public health reasons. The remainder is processed under immigration laws, including the right to apply for asylum.
Donato contested the way people came to run the Department of Homeland Security. Wolf became Acting Secretary in November 2019, replacing Kevin McAleenan, who also had an acting role. Courts have ruled that Wolf falsely made the leap to the top job from his position as undersecretary for strategy, policy and plans.
Donato, like other judges, said that McAleenan, who had been the Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, had also been promoted to Homeland Security’s supreme office, leaving his transfer to Wolf “without any legal effect.”
Homeland Security has been without a Senate-confirmed secretary since Kirstjen Nielsen stepped down in April 2019.
While the Trump administration has faced a legal setback, it has already put in place a series of policies to restrict asylum, including keeping asylum seekers waiting in Mexico while their claims are being heard in US courts.
Biden is expected to reverse some of Trump’s restrictive asylum measures, including the ‘Stay in Mexico’ policy, but recently said his administration would ‘probably need the next six months’ to put in place a system that would allow asylum seekers can handle a flood of migrants arriving at the southern border.
Also Friday, the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, ruled against government policies that gave state and local governments the right to refuse to resettle refugees.
The three-judge panel said Trump’s executive order requiring both state and local entities to give their consent before placing refugees in their areas would undermine the 1980 refugee law. That law enacted by Congress was designed to enable resettlement agencies to find the best place for a person to thrive while working with local and state officials.