The implementation of the rule — which disqualified most non-Mexican migrants from asylum — violated federal administrative law, the judge said.
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Tuesday to stop enforcing an immigration rule that disqualifies most non-Mexican migrants from asylum at the U. S. southern border, saying the broad restriction was enacted unlawfully in the summer of 2019.
Judge Timothy Kelly of the U. S. District Court in Washington said he moved to strike down the regulation, a joint effort by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, because its implementation violated federal administrative law. Specifically, Kelly said the administration had offered an insufficient explanation for not allowing the public to see and comment on a draft of the policy before its enactment.
“The Departments rely on a single newspaper article that does not even directly address the key predictive judgment in question: the likelihood of a surge in asylum seekers so great and so rapid as to threaten human life or defeat the purpose of the Rule if notice-and-comment procedures were followed,” Kelly wrote in his opinion, referring to one of the administration’s justifications for bypassing the public comment period generally required for new federal regulations.
Kelly, who was named to the bench by President Trump in 2017, did not render a judgment on other claims filed by the plaintiffs, a group of asylum-seekers and organizations providing them legal services.
