‘HUGE WIN’

Judge Throws Out Trump Rule That Blocked Central American Asylum Seekers at Southern Border

The policy effectively prevented most people from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala from claiming U.S. asylum.

A federal judge has struck down a policy designed by the Trump administration to make it much more difficult for Central Americans to claim asylum at the southern U.S. border, The Washington Post reports. The policy effectively blocked most people from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala from claiming U.S. asylum by first requiring them to apply for sanctuary in the countries they pass through on the way to the southern border, such as Mexico or Guatemala. The Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ruled that the administration “unlawfully promulgated” the policy, and didn’t demonstrate why it was in the public interest to bring in the change without warning. The government had argued that advance notice of the rule change would spark a wave of border-crossing attempts—but Kelly said the administration based its argument almost entirely on one newspaper article. One of the plaintiffs, Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, called the ruling a “huge win for asylum seekers.”