Justice Department Asks Supreme Court to Restore Asylum Reform

dreamer
AP/Lenny Ignelzi
Neil Munro

The Department of Justice is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to let agencies implement an asylum reform which was blocked by a California judge.

The reform says migrants at the southern border must apply for asylum in Mexico before they can use the U.S. courts to ask for asylum and green cards to live in the United States.

The judge’s March decision to block the reform is just one part of a broad campaign by pro-migration judges and activist to block the comprehensive series of border control steps adopted by President Donald Trump and his deputies. Many of these legal battles are expected to be decided by the Supreme Court in 2020 and 2021.

“At a minimum, the [judge’s] injunction is vastly overbroad,” said the Department of Justice’s filing to the Supreme Court:

The injunction’s circuit-wide sweep — preventing the rule’s 6 application to all aliens in the Ninth Circuit — violates the well-settled rule that injunctive relief must be limited to redressing a plaintiff’s own injuries, and unduly interferes with the Executive’s authority to establish immigration policy. The Court should, at the very least, stay the injunction to the extent that it goes beyond remedying the alleged injury to any specific aliens respondents identify as actual clients in the United States subject to the rule.

The Department also asked the court to limit the injunction block to only the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The California block was imposed by U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar, who was appointed by President Barack Obama.

The administration’s request to the Supreme Court comes after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals narrowed the California block. The injunction now only applies to California and Arizona, but not Texas and New Mexico. The narrowing decision was set by two GOP-nominated judges in a three-judge panel.

The decision to narrow Tigar’s injunction means that U.S. officials can reject many requests for asylum in Texas and New Mexico — at least until the ACLU files a lawsuit in the Fifth District courts.

An ACLU lawyer is already denouncing the department’s request to the Supreme Court, and saying it may cause the death of migrants:

The reform was prompted by the inrush of several hundred thousand economic migrants from Central America. The migrants get through the border by making legally dubious filings for asylum in the United States. Their requests for asylum allow them to get U.S. jobs, pay their debts to smugglers, and bring their children into U.S. schools while their lawsuits are delayed by the massive backlog in the immigration courts.

The administration’s effort to block the rush for America is also being watched by hundreds of millions of additional possible migrants in South America, Africa, and Asia.

The rush for America was primarily caused by another California judge, Dolly Gee. In 2015, she imposed a 2015 decision requiring border officials to release migrants after 20 days if they also bring a child.

Since Gee created the Flores loophole, it has been exploited by hundreds of thousands of migrants to get themselves and their children into the United States, including people from India and Africa.

During Gee’s migration, many migrants — including children — and have been killed or raped.

The asylum case is William P. Barr, Attorney General, et al., v. East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, et al.. in the Ninth Circuit.

 

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