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Central American migrants, part of the Central American caravan trying to reach the United States, are waiting to receive a free dinner in downtown Mexicali, Mexico on Monday November 19, 2018. (Rodrigo Abd / AP)
A federal judge temporarily barred the Trump administration from denying asylum to migrants illegally crossing the southern border into the United States, claiming that the policy was likely violating the federal law on admissibility to the United States. 39; asylum.
Jon S. Tigar of the San Francisco US District Court in a This decision was made public on November 9th. It was made public last Monday and took effect until December 19th.
The case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups on behalf of the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant.
The order reflects the judge's view that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits and suffer irreparable harm from the executive.
"Whatever the extent of the President's authority, he can not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition expressly prohibited by Congress," wrote the judge, appointed to the federal judiciary in 2012 by the former President Barack Obama. He felt that "failure to comply with entry requirements, such as arrival at a designated port of entry, should weigh very little, if any at all in the procedure for the entry." asylum".
The change envisaged by the Trump administration will only allow people who cross legal checkpoints on the southern border to seek asylum. Those who enter elsewhere will only be able to apply for a form of temporary protection that is harder to obtain and does not give full citizenship.
In his proclamation, Trump said the changes were necessary to prepare for the arrival of the caravan of Central American migrants crossing Mexico and heading for the US border. The president stated that asylum seekers had "no legal basis to enter our country". To justify its policy, the administration resorted to the same urgent authority invoked to justify "the ban on traveling".
At a hearing on Monday, Scott Stewart, a Justice Department attorney, spoke of "overwhelming pressure" from migrants attempting to cross the border illegally. He alleged that most asylum applications were "ultimately without merit".
But the judge seemed skeptical, observing that apprehensions at the border were close to their historic lows and that the federal law stipulated that all people living on American soil could apply for asylum, regardless of how they were treated. arrivals.
And in his decision, Tigar wrote that the government's argument that the mode of entry may be the only factor that makes a migrant ineligible for asylum "undermines credulity".
"To say that we can apply for something that we do not have the right to receive, is to give the right to apply a dead letter", a- he explained. "There is simply no reasonable way to harmonize the two."
The judge expressly denied the assertion that the president, by way of agreement, could give the mode of entry additional legal weight as a determinant of asylum.
"And if the defendants intend to say that the president by proclamation can overturn the clearly expressed intention of the Congress of Congress, simply because a law is in contradiction with the political objectives of the president, the court also rejects this argument," declared the judge.
Lee Gelernt, the ACLU attorney who pleaded the case, welcomed the decision in a press release.
"This ban is illegal and will put people's lives in danger." She warns of President Trump's indifference to the separation of powers, "he said. he declares. return them to danger according to the way they entered. Congress has been clear on this point for decades. "
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