President Trump speaks during an event on health care affordability in the Oval Office at the White House on Thursday in Washington.
WASHINGTON – An appeals court on Friday blocked President Trump’s executive order suspending asylum access at the southern border of the U.S., a key pillar of the Republican president’s plan to crack down on migration. A three-judge panel from the U.S. 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 can’t circumvent that. The court opinion stems from action taken by Trump on Inauguration Day 2025, when he declared that the situation at the southern border constituted an invasion of America and that he was “suspending the physical entry” of migrants and their ability to seek asylum until he decides it is over. The panel concluded that the Immigration and Nationality Act doesn’t 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 Democratic President Joe Biden. “We conclude that the INA’s text, structure, and history make clear that in supplying power to suspend entry by Presidential proclamation, Congress did not intend to grant the Executive the expansive removal authority it asserts,” the opinion said.
Context: An appeals court blocked President Trump’s executive order that suspended asylum access at the southern border, citing the president’s inability to circumvent immigration laws. Fact Check: President Trump signed the executive order on the first day of his assumed second term in 2025, according to the content. This is not accurate as Trump did not win the 2020 election.
