MCALLEN, Texas – On Wednesday, immigration advocates initiated a class action lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s proclamation that essentially halted the ability to seek asylum at U.S. ports of entry.
This civil lawsuit was lodged in a federal court in Southern California by the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, the American Immigration Council, Democracy Forward, and the Center for Constitutional Rights.
The lawsuit petitions the court to deem the proclamation unlawful, overturn the policy that terminated asylum at ports of entry, and reinstate access to the asylum process at these ports, which includes those whose appointments were canceled when President Donald Trump assumed office.
Unlike a similar lawsuit filed in February in a Washington, D.C., federal court representing people who had already reached U.S. soil and sought asylum after crossing between ports of entry, Wednesday’s lawsuit focuses on people who are not on U.S. soil and are seeking asylum at ports of entry.
No response was immediately issued by the Department of Homeland Security or Customs and Border Protection, which were both among the defendants listed.
Trump’s sweeping proclamation issued on his first day in office changed asylum policies, effectively ending asylum at the border. The proclamation said the screening process created by Congress under the Immigration and Nationality Act “can be wholly ineffective in the border environment” and was “leading to the unauthorized entry of innumerable illegal aliens into the United States.”
Immigrant advocates said that under the proclamation noncitizens seeking asylum at a port of entry are asked to present medical and criminal histories, a requirement for the visa process but not for migrants who are often fleeing from immediate danger.
“Nothing in the INA or any other source of law permits Defendants’ actions,” the immigrant advocates wrote in their complaint.
Thousands of people who sought asylum through the CBP One app, a system developed under President Joe Biden, had their appointments at ports of entry canceled on Trump’s first day in office as part of the proclamation that declared an invasion at the border.
“The Trump administration has taken drastic steps to block access to the asylum process, in flagrant violation of U.S. law,” the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies stated in a news release Wednesday.
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