US judge blocks Bidens asylum ban at Mexican border | Migration News

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Rights groups hail the decision as a victory, but note that it will have little immediate effect at the US-Mexico border.

A US judge has ruled that a key tenet of President Joe Bidens’ border policy violates the country’s asylum law, in a ruling hailed by rights groups as a victory.

In a ruling on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar blocked a restriction put in place by the Biden administration in May that effectively bars most asylum seekers from being able to seek protection at the U.S. border with Mexico.

However, the decision will have little immediate effect at the border as Tigar suspended its decision for two weeks to give the administration time to appeal to a higher court.

The Biden administration appealed within hours to the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The decision is a victory, said Katrina Eiland, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Unions Immigrants Rights Project, which has argued the case brought by a number of human rights groups.

But she noted that the success was limited. As the Biden administration prolongs the fight against its illegal ban every day, many people fleeing persecution and seeking safe shelter for their families are instead left in grave danger, Eiland said in a statement ahead of the administration’s appeal.

The Biden administration has touted its policy as being responsible for a sharp drop in irregular crossings at the US-Mexico border in recent months. Fewer than 100,000 people were detained at the border in June, the lowest total since February 2021.

The measure bars most migrants and asylum seekers from being able to seek protection at the border if they have not first sought asylum in a third country they passed through earlier in their journey, or used so-called legal channels to travel to the United States.

The policy was unveiled as a replacement for Title 42, a controversial COVID-era rule that allowed US authorities to refuse most asylum seekers at the border in the interest of protecting public health, without giving them the opportunity to seek safety.

But critics have called the Biden administration’s policy an asylum ban, saying it violates US obligations under international law and puts people at risk by forcing them to seek protection in dangerous third countries that lack strong asylum systems.

In Tuesday’s decision, Tigar wrote that entering the United States between ports of entry should not affect access to asylum.

The judge also noted that requiring an individual to seek safety in a third country violated legal precedent and that the asylum pathways created by the Biden administration were not genuinely available to many people seeking protection.

Tigar previously rolled back similar, albeit more restrictive, policies that former President Donald Trump’s administration had put in place.

They included a measure that sought to prevent those crossing the US border irregularly from accessing asylum, and another that barred people from seeking asylum in the US if they had traveled through a third country.

The Biden administration, however, had argued that its asylum policy was separate from what had been imposed under Trump, as it had been imposed alongside new legal immigration pathways.

But according to Keren Zwick, director of litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center, the Biden administration simply rehashed previous rules that restricted access to asylum on similar grounds, something courts had already rejected.

US laws protect the rights of people fleeing persecution to come to this country and seek asylum, period, Zwick said in a statement Tuesday.

We encourage the Biden administration to direct its resources now towards defending this right, rather than fighting to maintain this illegal and inhuman asylum ban.

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