WASHINGTON — A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Donald Trump’s directive to halt asylum applications at the southern border was illegal, challenging a crucial element of his strategy to reduce border migration. However, the judge delayed the enforcement of this ruling for two weeks to allow the government an opportunity to file an appeal.

On January 20, Trump announced that conditions at the southern border represented an invasion of the United States, and he was “suspending the physical entry” of migrants and their right to seek asylum until he decides the situation has resolved.

Judge Randolph Moss of the U.S. District Court in Washington specified that his decision to block Trump’s policy would commence on July 16, providing the Trump administration with a window to appeal the decision.

Moss wrote that neither the Constitution nor immigration law gives the president “an extra-statutory, extra-regulatory regime for repatriating or removing individuals from the United States, without an opportunity to apply for asylum” or other humanitarian protections.

The Homeland Security Department did not immediately respond to a request but an appeal is likely. The president and his aides have repeatedly attacked court rulings that undermine his policies as judicial overreach.

The ruling comes after illegal border crossings have plummeted. The White House said Wednesday that the Border Patrol made 6,070 arrests in June, down 30% from May to set a pace for the lowest annual clip since 1966. On June 28, the Border Patrol made only 137 arrests, a sharp contrast to late 2023, when arrests topped 10,000 on the busiest days.

Arrests dropped sharply when Mexican officials increased enforcement within their own borders in December 2023 and again when then-President Joe Biden introduced severe asylum restrictions in June 2024. They plunged more after Trump became president in January, deploying thousands of troops to the border under declaration of a national emergency

Trump and his allies say the asylum system has been abused. They argue that it draws people who know it will take years to adjudicate their claims in the country’s backlogged immigration courts during which they can work and live in America.

But supporters argue that the right to seek asylum is guaranteed in U.S. law and international commitments — even for those who cross the border illegally. They say that asylum is a vital protection for people fleeing persecution — a protection guaranteed by Congress that even the president doesn’t have the authority to ignore.

People seeking asylum must demonstrate a fear of persecution on a fairly narrow grounds of race, religion, nationality, or by belonging to a particular social or political group.

In the executive order, Trump argued that the Immigration and Nationality Act gives presidents the authority to suspend entry of any group that they find “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

Groups that work with immigrants — the Arizona-based Florence Project, the El Paso, Texas-based Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and the Texas-based RAICES — filed the lawsuit against the government, arguing that the president was wrong to equate migrants coming to the southern border with an invasion.

And they argued that Trump’s proclamation amounted to the president unilaterally overriding “… the immigration laws Congress enacted for the protection of people who face persecution or torture if removed from the United States.”

But the government argued that because both foreign policy and immigration enforcement fall under the executive branch of government, it was entirely under the president’s authority to declare an invasion.

“The determination that the United States is facing an invasion is an unreviewable political question,” the government wrote in one argument.

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