Judge Blocks Trump Asylum Restrictions At US-Mexico Border

Speaker 1: 00:00 Federal courts are being kept busy by challenges to recent Trump administration. Immigration policy changes on Wednesday, a federal judge in California issued an injunction against the government's new asylum restrictions. That ruling came just hours after a judge in Washington d c said the policy could continue and another immigration case, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that puts thousands of illegal entry convictions in San Diego in jeopardy. KPBS reporter Max Revlon Nether joins us by Skype and Max. Welcome. Hi. Now the immigration policy change that got to rulings yesterday is the one that restricts asylum claims from people who've traveled through so-called safe third countries. What did the judge in California say about why he's issuing the injunction? Speaker 2: 00:49 Well, the judge basically said that he was objecting to this on two grounds. I should mention that this is the same judge that had heard an earlier asylum ban, which banned people from applying for asylum if they entered the u s outside of a port of entry. He struck that down at the end of last year and just by happenstance happen to be hearing the same case and said at the beginning of the hearing that a lot of the argument that the government was making for the constitutionality of this asylum ban violated it in the same ways that the first asylum ban, uh, violated it. And that was because, and in his writing, this went against the express wishes of Congress when they were writing our asylum laws to, to bring it into accordance and agreement with international asylum laws. So that was number one is that he found it was not in line with what Congress intended. The second thing that he objected to was basically the process by which the rule was handed down. I spoke yesterday with Sarah Peer sees an attorney with the Migration Policy Institute and here's what she had to say about the process of rulemaking. Speaker 3: 01:55 This new asylum bar is different on the federal argument, but in the process argument, it's exactly the same. It was exactly the same process for issuing a regulation will going around noticing comment and it has exactly the same excuses for why they went around noticing comments. Speaker 2: 02:12 So basically the government was saying that it could skip several steps that it has for rulemaking because that this was a pressing international issue and that the government itself was using this instrument in this policy to pressure Mexico into taking a firmer stance on immigration. And that was something that the judge really did not listen kindly to. He, he, um, was not combative I would say. But really skeptical of the government's argument that this was a necessity based on, you know, diplomacy and foreign relations. Speaker 1: 02:45 Does this injunction apply to the entire country? Speaker 2: 02:49 Yes, it does. So, uh, things get a little bit interesting here because we know that earlier in the day yesterday, a judge in Washington d c upheld the rule pending, you know, litigation and wants to see this play out in courts. Of course, the judge in San Francisco issued a nationwide injunction, which takes effect immediately. So you have two separate district court judges making two separate opinions. What happens in that case of course, is that the one who issued the injunction nationwide takes precedence. This cannot be enforced at any point until either I higher court, like the appellate courts were to take action on this. And in fact when the government was arguing yesterday in San Francisco saying, Hey, did you see this judge in DC? I'm actually have held the rule. The District Court judge kind of snapped at them and said, listen, that's what we have the appellate courts for. Speaker 2: 03:41 We're district court judges, we have different jurisdictions and we are allowed to make different rulings and both rulings are apparently headed toward the appeals court. Well, meanwhile, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling on Wednesday that could throw it thousands of convictions in the past year and this ruling applies specifically to San Diego. Tell us about that. So these prosecutions and these charges were part of what was called operate, what is called operation streamline, which was introduced in the southern district of California in around July at the beginning of July last year. And the whole thinking behind that was to basically mass prosecute in these mass hearings with 30 to 40 people in a courtroom at once for these very low level crimes of illegal entry into the United States. So when this came to San Diego last year as part of the Department of Justice's zero tolerance policy, it was a little bit different. What they did was they weren't charging people with the traditional charge that they had been doing in Texas and Arizona. They altered it slightly. So that instead of saying that you had crossed outside of a port of entry, they were charging you with basically avoiding inspection at ports of entry. And this led to a bunch of, uh, challenges by federal public defenders in San Diego. I spoke with Kara Hart Slur, who is one of the attorneys with the federal defenders of San Diego who worked on the challenge to these convictions. Here's her explaining it. Speaker 4: 05:13 And today with the ninth circuit said, is that the government was basically charging these cases wrong for the last year. It said that the way that they were charging them required you to show that they were coming through a report. Whereas almost all of these cases involve people coming through the desert. Speaker 2: 05:29 So basically what she's saying there is that they were charging people with literally the wrong charge. The ninth circuit yesterday said that basically all of these charges were in proper, not necessarily unconstitutional, but improper, and that they could all be challenged. Now, there's 400 of these cases on appeal and plus thousands more for people who have been removed from the country or voluntarily left the country, who, if they were to come into the country, could now challenge and have those convictions vacated. I've been speaking with KPBS reporter, Max Riverland, Adler, and Max. Thank you. Thank you.