The Supreme Court today denied President Trump’s request to be immediately allowed to enforce a new policy of denying asylum to those who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
Lower courts had blocked Trump’s executive order that denied asylum opportunities to people who jumped the border in between official entry points between the U.S. and Mexico.
But in a 5-4 ruling, the nation’s highest court said that’s an unacceptable way to limit immigration.
Chief Justice John Roberts voted against the administration, joining the court’s four most liberal members.
Trump-nominated justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh sided with the president.
While the case advanced through the federal courts, the Homeland Security and Justice Departments announced a separate policy that keeps migrants on the Mexican side of the border, instead of releasing them into the interior of the country, while they await asylum hearings.
It’s unclear if today’s ruling will affect that policy’s implementation, although Mexico has agreed to cooperate.
The Supreme Court’s action upheld a ruling by U.S. District Judge John Tigar, who drew Trump’s ire by issuing an injunction to stop the selective asylum-granting from taking effect.
Tigar’s order came in a lawsuit that could still take a year or more to resolve; today’s decision concerned only the temporary hold Tigar put on the policy while the suit proceeds.
Tigar found that federal law allows immigrants to request asylum status no matter how they reach U.S. soil.
That Nov. 19 ruling drew an exasperated Trump to lash out at him as an ‘Obama judge,’ leading Roberts to issue a rare personal rebuke of the president.
Trump’s latest policy directives came in response to caravans of Central Americans making their way through Mexico.
While some are likely genuine asylum cases, many are in search of work in the United States.
Only about 15 per cent of asylum seekers who cross into the U.S. illegally are ultimately granted that status once judges hear their cases.
The judicial backlog, however, stood at more than 311,000 at the beginning of 2018.
Friday’s Supreme Court order came at a tense moment when Trump was trying to outmaneuver Senate Democrats on a government funding package whose failure could shut a quarter of the government at midnight.
The central issue of that conflict is the president’s long-sought border wall between Mexico and the United States.
He has insisted that it’s a needed measure to shore up border security, even though his own incoming chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, once called the border wall “simplistic” and “absurd and almost childish.”