A federal judge in Washington on Wednesday blocked President Donald Trump’s proclamation freezing most asylum claims at the southern border.
Federal District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Randolph Moss wrote in a 128-page opinion that the president lacked authority under immigration law and the U.S. Constitution to issue the proclamation. The judge, an Obama appointee, stayed his ruling for 14 days to give the Trump administration a chance to appeal.
“The Court recognizes that the Executive Branch faces enormous challenges in preventing and deterring unlawful entry into the United States and in adjudicating the overwhelming backlog of asylum claims of those who have entered the country,” wrote Moss. “But the [Immigration and Nationality Act], by its terms, provides the sole and exclusive means for removing people already present in the country.”
“Nor can Article II’s Vesting Clause or Article IV’s Invasion Clause be read to grant the President or his delegees authority to adopt an alternative immigration system, which supplants the statutes that Congress has enacted and the regulations that the responsible agencies have promulgated,” the judge continued.
The ruling could knock down a key piece of Trump’s border policy just at the White House is celebrating a massive drop in immigration since Trump took office.
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In his ruling, Moss granted class-action status to the lawsuit and said it would apply to “all individuals who are or will be subject to the Proclamation and/or its implementation and who are now or will be present in the United States.”
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller slammed and ridiculed the ruling, taking special issue with the scope of its effect.
“To try to circumvent the Supreme Court ruling on nationwide injunctions a marxist judge has declared that all potential FUTURE illegal aliens on foreign soil (eg a large portion of planet earth) are part of a protected global ‘class’ entitled to admission into the United States,” Miller posted on X.
“The West will not survive if our sovereignty is not restored,” he added, likely referring to judicial overreach that has stymied the president’s agenda through broad injunctions delivered by lower court judges.
Last week, the Supreme Court delivered an opinion curbing district court judges’ authority to issue nationwide injunctions on presidential orders.
“[F]ederal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the court’s opinion.
“When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too,” she said.
Trump issued a proclamation on his first day in office restricting asylum claims at the southern border, calling the flood of illegal immigration that swamped the United States’ southern border an “invasion” and arguing that the mass of unchecked people represented a significant “public-health concern.”