TRO Granted: Trump's Asylum Ban Blocked by Federal Court

Washington Post, Nov. 20 2018 - "A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from denying asylum to migrants who crossed the southern border illegally, saying the president violated a “clear command” from Congress to allow them to apply.

In a ruling late Monday, U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar of San Francisco issued a nationwide restraining order barring enforcement of the policy President Trump announced Nov. 8, which he billed as an urgent attempt to stop the flow of thousands of asylum-seeking families across the border each month.

The rule pursued by the Trump administration would allow only people who cross at legal checkpoints to request asylum. Those entering elsewhere would be able to seek a temporary form of protection that is harder to win and doesn’t yield full citizenship. The changes would amount to a transformation of long-established asylum procedures, codified both at the international level and by Congress.

“Whatever the scope of the President’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” wrote the judge, whom President Barack Obama nominated to the federal bench in 2012. Tigar reasoned that the “failure to comply with entry requirements such as arriving at a designated port of entry should bear little, if any, weight in the asylum process.”

As a result of Tigar’s restraining order, migrants may once again seek asylum either at legal entry points or after crossing illegally onto U.S. soil."