Appeals Court Lets Trump Administration Suspend Entry of Some Refugees

Judges said the order does not apply to people approved for refugee status before Trump was sworn in.

President Donald Trump in Washington on March 25, 2025. Win McNamee/Getty Images

A federal appeals court on March 25 granted a Trump administration motion to stay a lower court order, enabling the government to halt the processing of refugee applications and letting refugees into the United States.

A U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed to enter an emergency block against part of U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead’s Feb. 28 preliminary injunction, which blocked Trump administration officials from implementing President Donald Trump’s executive order suspending the entry of refugees under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and directing the termination of funding to groups under the program.

U.S. Circuit Judges Barry G. Silverman, Bridget S. Bade, and Ana de Alba said in a unanimous decision that the injunction will remain in effect for people who were approved as refugees before Jan. 20, when Trump took office.

“In all other respects, the district court’s February 28, 2025 preliminary injunction order is stayed,” they said.

The judges referenced the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 decision upholding a travel ban on some countries promulgated during Trump’s first term. Justices said at the time that federal law “exudes deference” to the president and “vests [him] with ample power to impose entry restrictions in addition to those elsewhere enumerated” in the law, the Immigration and Nationality Act.

The case is not over; the judges said the current briefing schedule remains in effect.

The U.S. State Department declined to comment. A lawyer for the plaintiffs did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

Refugees must meet certain criteria, such as being unable or unwilling to return to their home countries or most recent countries of residence “because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

Some 60,000 refugees were admitted into the United States in fiscal year 2023, the most recent year for which data is available.

Whitehead recently denied a request for a stay on the injunction while the appeal was being considered.

He also earlier in the week issued an updated injunction that ordered the Trump administration to reinstate all refugee resettlement contracts that had been terminated under Trump’s order, finding the step “necessary to prevent permanent damage and preserve the status quo while the parties litigate the merits of this lawsuit.”

The government has appealed that injunction.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio terminated the contracts, citing Trump’s order and stating that it had been determined the contracts “no longer effectuate agency priorities.”

The State Department also suspended refugee entry.

People who were approved for refugee status and have not been admitted to the United States, individuals who applied for refugee status, and several groups that had contracts with the government to help refugees resettle in the United States sued the government over the terminations and suspensions.

Congress, in 1980, in an amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act, said there would be a permanent and systemic procedure for admitting refugees into the United States.

Trump’s order said the United States does not have the ability to absorb large numbers of immigrants and that it is U.S. policy moving forward “to admit only those refugees who can fully and appropriately assimilate into the United States and to ensure that the United States preserves taxpayer resources for its citizens.”

He ordered the suspension of refugee entry until after the secretary of state and other officials reviewed the program and advised him as to whether its resumption “would be in the interests of the United States.”