The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco struck down immigration restrictions that began under President Donald Trump in 2018 and were renewed under President Joe Biden in 2023.
Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle
The Biden and Trump administrations had no legal authority to deny asylum to thousands of migrants who were fleeing danger in their homelands and entered the U.S. without going through a designated port of entry, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.
A 2-1 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco struck down immigration restrictions that began under President Donald Trump in 2018 and were reinstated under President Joe Biden in 2023 after another court ruling. Trump imposed further restrictions last year that have been rejected by another federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., and his administration has appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court.
Asylum — the right to remain in the United States, receive a work permit and, after five years, apply for citizenship — can be sought by anyone fleeing persecution, regardless of where they enter the U.S., the court said Monday.
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It is “a central promise that our law makes to noncitizens who seek refuge in the United States,” Judge Richard Paez wrote in the majority opinion. Quoting the court’s 2021 ruling on Trump’s first restrictions, he said Congress, in authorizing asylum along with 145 other nations, “recognized that refugees fleeing imminent persecution do not have the luxury of choosing their escape route into the United States.”
Paez, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, was joined by U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai, a Biden appointee to the federal court in Oregon temporarily assigned to the appeals court. In dissent, Judge Patrick Bumatay, appointed by Trump, said the ruling, if it stands, would “usurp immigration policy from the political branches,” referring to the president and Congress.
When the restrictions were first imposed, Bumatay wrote, “U.S. officials on the southern border were encountering approximately 2,000 inadmissible aliens every day.” His opinion, like those of other conservative judges, referred to the migrants as “aliens,” while Paez called them “asylum-seekers” or “noncitizens.”
The case involved Lester J. Garcia Morales, a taxi driver who said he fled Guatemala along with his wife, Sheyla Monroy Tay, and their three children in 2023 after a gang leader killed his sister, also a cab driver, for refusing to pay him to run her business. He said the gang leader threatened to kill him and his family, and local police refused to protect them.
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A federal immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals found them ineligible to seek asylum because they had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without first passing through one of about 50 designated ports of entry, where appointments must be made in advance by smartphone. Their lawsuit, which drew support from the American Civil Liberties Union, seeks to prevent their deportation to Guatemala, and could set a precedent for other cases.
In Monday’s ruling, Paez said the Immigration and Nationality Act, passed by Congress in 1965, declared that anyone from a foreign country who has arrived in the United States, “whether or not at a designated port of arrival … may apply for asylum” if they would be endangered by deportation.
Bumatay argued in dissent that the law merely allows people to “apply for asylum” but leaves the executive branch, including U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, with “broad authority to set the conditions on who is ineligible for asylum.”
But Paez said there was no reason to believe Congress would have “mandated a refugee’s right to apply for asylum based on their manner of entry and simultaneously permitted the government to deny asylum eligibility on that same basis.”
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Lawyers in the case were not immediately available for comment.