A federal judge issued an order on Feb. 20 temporarily preventing the Trump administration from removing a group of anonymous prospective asylum seekers while litigation continues in a lawsuit they joined challenging one of President Donald Trump’s orders.
In a motion on Feb. 19, the plaintiffs described the individuals with initials such as “A.M.” and “B.R.,” stating their names had been filed under seal.
“These Individual Plaintiffs are noncitizens who fled persecution and torture in their countries of origin and seek asylum and other protection in the United States,” the motion states.
It says that “plaintiffs’ counsel conferred with Defendants’ counsel, who indicated that Defendants oppose the relief requested in this motion and do not agree to keep these Individual Plaintiffs in the United States pending the outcome of this lawsuit.”
The court has set a hearing for the morning of Feb. 24 in Washington.
According to the amended complaint, three of the individuals fled Afghanistan after the Taliban retook power. Two others came from Ecuador, including “a woman who was kidnapped, raped, and tortured by a drug cartel on two separate occasions.”
The lawsuit alleges that the administration violated multiple federal laws, including the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
It stated that “under the Proclamation, the government is doing just what Congress by statute decreed that the United States must not do. It is returning asylum seekers—not just single adults, but families too—to countries where they face persecution or torture, without allowing them to invoke the protections Congress has provided.”
Trump’s proclamation, signed on Jan. 20, stated that the United States is facing an invasion across the southern border and prohibited illegal aliens from invoking provisions of the INA that would permit their continued presence in the country. It specifically cited a portion of federal law stating in part that “any alien who is physically present in the United States … may apply for asylum.”
Federal officials, according to the proclamation, faced significant information gaps and “do not have the ability to verify with certainty the criminal record or national-security risks associated with the illegal entry of every alien at the southern border.”
The proclamation invoked Article II of the Constitution, which outlines the executive branch’s authority, as well as Article IV, Section 4 which directs the government to protect states from invasion.
Trump suggested that portions of the INA may not apply in times of emergency.
“The INA does not, however, occupy the Federal Government’s field of authority to protect the sovereignty of the United States, particularly in times of emergency when entire provisions of the INA are rendered ineffective by operational constraints, such as when there is an ongoing invasion into the States,” he said in the proclamation.
“The President’s inherent powers to control the borders of the United States, including those deriving from his authority to control the foreign affairs of the United States, necessarily include the ability to prevent the physical entry of aliens involved in an invasion into the United States, and to rapidly repatriate them to an alternative location.”
