‘BIG WIN’: Trump Praises Supreme Court Ruling to Allow Nationwide Enforcement of New Asylum Rule

Monica Sanchez | September 12, 2019
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President Trump is praising the U.S. Supreme Court’s late Wednesday ruling that will allow his administration to enforce – at least for now – a new asylum policy nationwide.

The new asylum rule would bar migrants who pass through another country on the way to the U.S. without first requesting asylum there from seeking refuge in America. Many migrants from Central America and Africa that traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border via caravan would therefore not be eligible to apply.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that the Trump administration could temporarily enforce the rule nationwide, undoing a lower court decision blocking the asylum policy in some states along the southern U.S. border.

The Associated Press explains,

The legal challenge to the new policy has a brief but somewhat convoluted history. U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in San Francisco blocked the new policy from taking effect in late July. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals narrowed Tigar’s order so that it applied only in Arizona and California, states that are within the 9th Circuit.

That left the administration free to enforce the policy on asylum seekers arriving in New Mexico and Texas. Tigar issued a new order on Monday that reimposed a nationwide hold on asylum policy. The 9th Circuit again narrowed his order on Tuesday.

The high court action allows the Republican administration to impose the new policy everywhere while the court case against it continues.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented, with Sotomayor writing that “the stakes for asylum seekers could not be higher.”

Mexico on Thursday said it does not agree with the Trump administration's asylum policy involving a "third party country," with Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard saying during a press conference that Mexico would "never" implement such a rule.

However, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Thursday said that he spoke with President Trump on the phone Wednesday and that "relations between the two countries were very good and Trump recognized Mexico’s efforts," AP reports.

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