An appeals court on Friday blocked Donald Trump’s executive order suspending asylum access, a key pillar of the US president’s original plan to crack down on immigration at the southern border after he retook the White House.
A three-judge panel from the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit found that immigration laws give people the right to apply for asylum at the border, and the president cannot circumvent that.
The panel concluded that the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) does not authorize the president to remove the plaintiffs under “procedures of his own making”, allow him to suspend plaintiffs’ right to apply for asylum or curtail procedures for adjudicating their anti-torture claims.
“The power by proclamation to temporarily suspend the entry of specified foreign individuals into the United States does not contain implicit authority to override the INA’s mandatory process to summarily remove foreign individuals,” wrote Judge J Michelle Childs, who was nominated to the bench by Joe Biden.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The court opinion stems from action taken by Trump on his inauguration day in 2025 as he began his second term, when he declared that the situation at the US-Mexico border constituted “an invasion” of the US and that he was “suspending the physical entry” of immigrants and their ability to request asylum until he decided the situation was over.
The decision announced on Friday concurs with a lower court’s opinion from last year.
Lee Gelernt, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said in a statement that the appellate ruling was “essential for those fleeing danger who have been denied even a hearing to present asylum claims under the Trump administration’s unlawful and inhumane executive order”.
Judge Justin Walker, a Trump nominee, wrote a partial dissent. He said the law gave immigrants protections against removal to countries where they would be persecuted but the administration can issue broad denials of asylum applications.
Walker, however, agreed with the majority that the president cannot deport immigrants to countries where they will be persecuted or strip them of mandatory procedures that protect against their removal.
Judge Cornelia Pillard, who was nominated by Barack Obama, also heard the case.
The administration can ask the full appeals court to reconsider the ruling, or go to the US supreme court.
The order does not formally take effect until after the court considers any request to reconsider.
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said she had not seen the ruling but that “it’s unsurprising to me. We have liberal judges across the country who are acting against this president for political purposes. They are not acting as true litigators of the law. They are looking at these cases from a political lens.”
Leavitt, speaking at a press gaggle outside the White House, said Trump was taking actions that were “completely within his powers as commander-in-chief”.
She added that the judges should be thanking the president for stopping what she called a “scam” allowed during the Biden administration that let “tens of millions of illegal aliens” into the country by allowing them to “fraudulently” claim asylum.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the executive order, Trump argued that the Immigration and Nationality Act gives presidents the authority to suspend entry of any group that they find “detrimental to the interests of the United States”. The executive order also suspended the ability of immigrants to ask for asylum. The White House told Fox News the administration would “quickly” prepare an appeal against Friday’s ruling.
