Federal judge blocks Trump from barring asylum claims at southern border

A federal judge in Washington, DC has blocked Trump’s day one executive order prohibiting migrants crossing the southern border illegally from applying for asylum.

US District Judge Randolph D. Moss wrote in the 128-page ruling,  "the Court concludes that neither the INA [Immigration and Nationality Act] nor the Constitution grants the President or the Agency Defendants authority to replace the comprehensive rules and procedures set forth in the INA and the governing regulations with an extra-statutory, extraregulatory regime for repatriating or removing individuals from the United States, without an opportunity to apply for asylum or withholding of removal and without complying with the regulations governing CAT [Convention Against Torture] protection."

"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," he continued.

"But the INA, by its terms, provides the sole and exclusive means for removing people already present in the country, and, as the Department of Justice correctly concluded less than nine months ago, neither § 1182(f) nor § 1185(a) provides the President with the unilateral authority to limit the rights of aliens present in the United States to apply for asylum."

Moss granted the plaintiffs’ request to create a class of illegal immigrants who are currently subject to the executive order, or could be in the future. This comes after the Supreme Court ruled in June against nationwide injunctions handed down by lower court judges. The Supreme Court blocked nationwide injunctions from applying to parties that are not affected by a law under question.

Senior White House official and homeland security adviser Stephen Miller wrote in response to the ruling, "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."