Judge Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S. District Court in Washington declined to issue a temporary restraining order that would have blocked the government from effectively banning asylum for most Central American migrants, who have been arriving in record numbers this year.
The rule, now being applied on a limited basis in Texas, requires migrants to seek asylum in the first safe country they arrive in — in most of the current cases, Mexico.
“I do not find on this limited record the plaintiffs have provided sufficient evidence of a certain great and immediate harm to meet this high burden,” Kelly said Wednesday.
Under the policy, which the administration announced July 15, only immigrants who had officially lost their bids for asylum in another country through which they traveled or who had been victims of “severe” human trafficking are permitted to apply for asylum in the United States.
Hondurans and Salvadorans have to apply for asylum and be denied in Guatemala or Mexico before they became eligible to apply in the United States, and Guatemalans have to apply and be denied in Mexico. The policy reversed long-standing asylum laws that ensure people can seek safe haven no matter where they come from. On July 16, the day the new rule went into effect — initially in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas — the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the policy in court in San Francisco. The case under review Wednesday in Washington was filed separately by two advocacy organizations, the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services.
The groups had asked the court to find that Congress did not intend that mere transit through another country would render an applicant ineligible for asylum in the United States, and to rule that the policy did not comply with required procedural steps.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.