Appeals Court Strikes Down Trump Administration’s Asylum Ban - The New York Times

One of the Trump administration's harshest steps to block applicants for asylum  - a statutory and treaty obligation of the United States - has been repudiated by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  The rule at stake here is the "third country bar rule".  That measure - which has no basis in statute - effectively bars asylum applications by aliens.   District Judge John S. Tigar and 9th Circuit orders blocking Trump's efforts have been stayed by the United States Supreme Court.  Sonia Sotomayor bitterly complained of such measures by the Supreme Court majority.  - gwc
Appeals Court Strikes Down Trump Administration’s Asylum Ban - The New York Times
by Miriam Jordan


LOS ANGELES — A federal appeals court on Monday struck down President Trump’s policy that barred most migrants from seeking asylum in the United States if they had passed through another country, concluding that the government did “virtually nothing” to make sure that another country is “a safe option” for those fleeing persecution.

[In East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Barr] a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco affirmed the decision of a federal judge [Jon S. Tigar] who ruled last year that the so-called third-country transit rule was unlawful, with one judge calling it “perhaps the most significant change to American asylum in a generation.”

The ruling was an interim but important step. In September, the Supreme Court had allowed the Trump administration’s rule forbidding most Central American migrants from seeking asylum in the United States to take effect while the appeals courts deliberated its legality.

That stay remains in place until the Supreme Court takes up the case or the Trump administration abandons the policy. In the meantime, nearly all asylum seekers have been temporarily blocked from entering the country under a separate administration directive, issued as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, that closed the border to all but United States citizens and lawful permanent residents.
Still, Monday’s opinion was an important legal milestone, a 66-page opinion that found serious legal deficiencies in one of the administration’s signature immigration policies.

“The Trump administration is sure to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration at Cornell Law School.

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