US judge blocks Trump administration’s sweeping asylum rules

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s most sweeping set of asylum restrictions less than two weeks before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.

The new rules had been set to take effect Monday. The ruling Friday by U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco has limited immediate impact because the government has largely suspended asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border during the coronavirus pandemic, citing public health concerns.

Still, letting the rules take effect would have been felt by some who can still claim asylum and make it significantly more difficult for all asylum-seekers once 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 with unworthy claims. But Donato sided with advocacy groups who sued over the restrictions, saying the acting Homeland Security secretary lacks authority.

It was not immediately clear if the Trump administration would make an emergency appeal.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Trump administration lost an appeal Friday to grant states and local entities the right to shut out refugees.

The three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the executive order that required both state and local entities to give their consent before allowing refugees to be placed in their areas “would cause inequitable treatment of refugees and undermine the very national consistency that the Refugee Act is designed to protect."

U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte of Maryland blocked the executive order in January of 2020, six months before it was to go into effect. Messitte said the process of resettling refugees should continue as it has for nearly 40 years, with resettlement agencies deciding where a person would best thrive.

Church World Service, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, and HIAS — a Jewish nonprofit — sued in November of 2019 to block the executive order. The agencies said the executive order was an attempt at a state-by-state ban on refugees.

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said the agencies were prepared to go to the Supreme Court had they lost the appeal.

Only one state, Texas, had said it would use the new power to stop refugee resettlement.

“What made me worry about the executive order was it reflected the desire to make this program susceptible to political pandering when you're talking about lives being on the line," she said. “That was deeply troubling."

Now O’Mara Vignarajah said the agencies can concentrate on rebuilding the program that had been crippled by the Trump administration over the past four years and is expected to be restored by President-elect Joe Biden.

Trump drastically lowered the refugee admissions cap on the number of refugees allowed into the United States each year. This year he set the cap at 15,000, a record low.

Biden has pledged to set the annual refugee admissions cap at 125,000.

“This makes what was already going to be a significant undertaking in ramping things back up a little bit easier," O’Mara Vignarajah said of Friday's ruling.