Federal Court Strikes Down
Trump Asylum Ban
Trump Asylum Ban
Wednesday, July 1, 2020

A Trump-appointed federal district judge in Washington, DC has issued an opinion striking down a Trump Administration rule requiring migrants seeking to enter the United States to first seek asylum in countries they travel through on their way. Judge Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued his order and its accompanying opinion late in the evening on Tuesday. June 30, 2020, concluding that the ban failed to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) governing how agencies should implement rules. The Administration had issued the ban in July of 2019 in an effort to prevent Central American migrants fleeing violence in their countries from seeking asylum in the United States,
The ban that was the subject of the Judge's ruling was promulgated in an interim final rule, published on July 16, 2019, by the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security, .governing asylum claims in the context of aliens who enter or attempt to enter the United States across the southern land border after failing to apply for protection from persecution or torture while in a third country through which they transited en route to the United States. The rule has essentially forced asylum-seeking migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to first seek it from Mexico before seeking asylum in the United States.