A lawsuit filed by a coalition of immigrant rights groups and legal service providers alleges the Trump administration’s asylum restrictions are illegal.
A Jan. 20 proclamation from the Trump administration closed access to asylum at the border on the grounds that the U.S. is being invaded.
The ACLU and other rights groups filed suit against it on behalf of legal service providers at the border — including the Phoenix-based Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project. Lee Gelernt, deputy director of ACLU’s Immigrant Rights Project, says the new order goes against laws enacted by Congress four decades ago that require people fleeing persecution to at least be screened for asylum eligibility.
“I think we're looking at not just how much harm is going to occur for all of these families who are seeking asylum, but it's also putting into play an enormous separation of powers of whether the president has the ability to simply ignore what Congress has done,” he said. “The president is saying ‘I can ignore those laws whenever I declare there’s been an invasion.’ Obviously migrants do not constitute an invasion within the meaning of federal law or the constitution,” Gelernt said.
Gelernt and other attorneys argue the proclamation goes against a statute within federal immigration law that guarantees the right to seek asylum in the U.S., particularly because, unlike other asylum restrictions, it does not provide any pathway into the U.S. for screening.
A separate suit filed by the ACLU and other groups against a Biden-era asylum restriction is still in court.
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Thousands of refugees in the U.S. lost health coverage on Oct. 1 as new Medicaid eligibility rules took effect. In Arizona, unlike in most states, even children and pregnant women are being dropped. -
On Monday, dozens of agents swarmed a stretch of private land where the activists had been camped in and around a centuries-old cottonwood tree. Contractors tore down the tree and agents made multiple arrests. -
New research shows the ancient site is much older than previously thought. In fact, it’s now confirmed to be the oldest known scientifically dated geoglyph in the Americas, 2,000 years older than the first Pyramids built in Egypt. -
Protesters have been camped out in a plot of private ranch land in Lochiel for over two months now, trying to block wall construction as it neared a towering cottonwood tree that was the last of a grove slated for destruction to make way for two, parallel steel bollard walls. -
Ahmed Soliman has no ties to Equatorial Guinea. The 30-year-old man was born in Egypt and brought to the United States. when he was just 4 years old. He grew up in Phoenix. Now he’s believed to be in a hospital in the African nation.
