Immigrant rights groups won a court-ordered exception to the so-called asylum ban for some people ordered to wait just outside the United States before making their claim. On Thursday, the federal government hopes to convince a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel to put the mandate on hold during an appeal.
The Trump administration moved last July to disqualify most migrants from seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. But immigrant rights groups convinced a federal judge the rule should not apply to migrants from countries other than Mexico, if federal officials had made them wait outside the U.S. to submit their claim at a port of entry.
Now the 9th Circuit gets to weigh in.
“They’ll be really digging into that language and what it means to arrive and then be turned back at the border prior to the effective date," said Sarah Pierce, policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
The 9th Circuit had knocked down the Trump administration’s immigration policies for a long time. But the Administration has more recently had a run of 9th Circuit victories, Pierce said.
