Judge Rules President Trump Cannot Ban Asylum Seekers

President Donald Trump does not want anyone from the migrant caravan to enter the U.S., he has made that abundantly clear. Whether it’s by claiming there’s an invasion or placing racist commercial ads, Trump doesn’t want them here and that’s it. Now a judge is telling him he cannot prevent these people from seeking asylum because that is the law.

On Nov. 19, Judge Jon S. Tigar of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that Trump’s administration’s new asylum ban has been temporarily blocked. But let’s backtrack for a second. Originally, Trump had issued a proclamation that said, according to CNN: “large, organized groups who were traveling through Mexico and reportedly intend to enter the United States unlawfully or without proper documentation and to seek asylum.” It went on to say that asylum seekers could only enter at specific locations, and not just another on the border. “But aliens who enter the United States unlawfully through the southern border in contravention of this proclamation will be ineligible to be granted asylum,” the President wrote, according to CNN. “The arrival of large numbers of aliens will contribute to the overloading of our immigration and asylum system and to the release of thousands of aliens into the interior of the United States,” the proclamation read.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit against Trump and Judge Tigar ruled in their favor, saying that Trump’s proclamation is unconstitutional.

“Whatever the scope of the President’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” Tigar wrote, according to CNN.

ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt, who argued the case, said after the ruling: “This ban is illegal, will put people’s lives in danger, and raises the alarm about President Trump’s disregard for separation of powers. There is no justifiable reason to flatly deny people the right to apply for asylum, and we cannot send them back to danger based on the manner of their entry. Congress has been clear on this point for decades.”

The next hearing on this matter will be on December 19.