IMMIGRANT ADVOCATES FILE LAWSUIT CHALLENGING TRUMP ASYLUM SHUTDOWN
“This proclamation is an unprecedented power grab at the expense of Congress. The president cannot simply wipe away the system Congress meticulously created to provide safety for desperate people fleeing persecution,” ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt said in a statement. “Even in the Muslim ban during his first term, President Trump did not try to eliminate asylum.”
“If this Proclamation is upheld,” he added, “it will mean any President can simply declare an ‘invasion’ and all pathways for asylum disappear, poof.”
Legal aid groups filed the lawsuit against the Trump administration on behalf of the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services in San Antonio, the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso, and the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project in Tucson. The groups asked the court to declare Trump’s proclamation unlawful and to bar federal officials from implementing it.
In response to the lawsuit, White House spokesman Kush Desai said Trump “was given a resounding mandate to end the disregard and abuse of our immigration laws and secure our borders. The Trump administration will continue to put Americans and America First.”
