Immigrant advocates file lawsuit challenging Trump asylum shutdown...WaPo
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The Trump administration has claimed there is an “invasion” on the U.S.-Mexico border to justify summarily expelling migrants without giving them a chance to apply for asylum.
Immigrant advocacy groups on Monday filed the first major lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s claim that there is an “invasion” on the U.S.-Mexico border to justify summarily expelling migrants without giving them a chance to apply for asylum.
Lawyers argued in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington that President Donald Trump is trampling on decades-old federal laws and international treaties that allow anyone who sets foot on U.S. soil to apply for humanitarian protection.
Trump declared an emergency on the U.S. southern border immediately after taking office and has invoked an executive power that he says enables him to suspend admission to foreigners he deems “detrimental” to U.S. interests.
Trump used the same power, Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, during his first term to bar foreigners from certain Muslim-majority countries from coming to the United States under a travel ban. His supporters say he is on solid footing because after multiple legal challenges and rewrites of the ban, the Supreme Court upheld it by a 5-4 vote.
But lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Immigrant Justice Center and others leading the lawsuit said the Supreme Court never ruled on whether the travel ban authorized the president to block people from seeking asylum.
The ACLU says Trump is overriding Congress, which passed laws allowing migrants to apply for asylum once they arrive in the United States.
The lawsuit challenges a Trump proclamation on Jan. 20 titled “Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion,” which invokes 212(f) to shield states from an “invasion” of undocumented immigrants. Opponents of the proclamation say the president’s order illegally exposes migrants — including children traveling without their parents — to swift deportation to countries where they could be persecuted. “Immigration — even at elevated levels — is not an ‘invasion,’” the lawsuit said.
“This proclamation is an unprecedented power grab at the expense of Congress. The president cannot simply wipe away the system Congress meticulously created to provide safety for desperate people fleeing persecution,” ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt said in a statement. “Even in the Muslim ban during his first term, President Trump did not try to eliminate asylum.”
“If this Proclamation is upheld,” he added, “it will mean any President can simply declare an ‘invasion’ and all pathways for asylum disappear, poof.”
Legal aid groups filed the lawsuit against the Trump administration on behalf of the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services in San Antonio, the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso, and the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project in Tucson. The groups asked the court to declare Trump’s proclamation unlawful and to bar federal officials from implementing it.
In response to the lawsuit, White House spokesman Kush Desai said Trump “was given a resounding mandate to end the disregard and abuse of our immigration laws and secure our borders. The Trump administration will continue to put Americans and America First.”
Anthony “Scott” Good, the new chief of law enforcement operations for the U.S. Border Patrol, said border agents are using the authority to “remove people immediately.”
“Nobody’s being released,” he said Sunday at the National Sheriffs’ Association winter conference, to applause from the sheriffs.
Good said the Border Patrol chief or deputy chief could authorize the release of a migrant in the United States pending immigration proceedings, but as of Sunday, he said, “they haven’t done a single one.”
Asylum is a humanitarian protection for people who fled or fear persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinions or other reasons that make them a target. The principles were shaped in the aftermath of World War II, when the United States turned away the SS St. Louis, a ship carrying passengers fleeing Nazi repression, leaving many to return to Europe and perish in the war.
Lawmakers cemented the protections in the 1980 U.S. Refugee Act, after the Vietnam War prompted hundreds of thousands of people from that country to flee to the United States.
Trump officials argue that times have changed and that immigrants and smugglers have been exploiting the asylum system for years at the U.S. southern border, using it as a proxy to enter the United States illegally to work.
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, said at the sheriffs’ conference on Saturday that the immigration system is so clogged with false asylum applications that immigrants can live and work in the United States for years without fear of deportation.
“They simply don’t qualify for asylum,” Homan told the sheriffs.
The lawsuit is one of several legal actions targeting the Trump administration’s new immigration policies, including his efforts to end birthright citizenship for the children of noncitizens and foreign visitors and his halting of the use of a Customs and Border Protection app on the southern border to schedule appointments for migrants seeking protection in the United States.