A federal judge in the Ninth Circuit court has halted US President Donald Trump’s plan to make asylum seekers get asylum in a third country before coming to the US, in nine different states.
While the court banned the practice in the nine states that lie within its jurisdiction, Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, it was not able to ban the policy nationwide as it attempted to. This means that several states along the southern border of the US, like New Mexico and Texas, will still follow through on Trump’s plan, though the battle still continues in court, with more arguments being heard October 1.
This court decision continues a debate that has been raging for a while in the US, with the Trump administration attempting to implement this rule on July 15 surrounding US asylum law. That regulation was blocked on July 24, with a temporary injunction while the matter is more thoroughly resolved by the court, though the judge in this case said the rule is “likely invalid because it is inconsistent with the existing asylum laws,” and that it is “arbitrary and capricious.”
While this specific case is about the Trump administration facing difficulties in court over immigration policy, this is not the first time. Trump started his campaign by calling many that come into the US from Mexico criminals and rapists, along with his promise to building a wall on the Mexican border that Mexico would pay for, leading people to believe he planned implementing policies that would limit immigration into the US from the southern border.
Many of these tactics by Trump have led to lengthy court battles that have slowed the attempts by the Trump administration to implement these policies, with many of them not having been given a decision by the Supreme Court to more definitively settle the matter.
Though the administration has still tried to deter immigrants from coming to the country through its policy of detention centers with extremely poor sanitation and overcrowding, with the court ruling that the Trump administration has to provide proper sanitation for the children that are detained there. In fact, the previous Secretary of Homeland Security resigned in April because the administration was being too harsh on immigrants, and the number of children that have died in their custody has not made their case any better.
