A federal judge in California blocked the Trump administration from requiring asylum seekers to return to Mexico as they await court hearings in the U.S. But the judge delayed implementing his ruling to give the government time to appeal.

U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco wrote in a 27-page ruling that current U.S. law does not authorize the Department of Homeland Security to enact the Migrant Protection Protocols, first announced in a December 2018 memo by outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen. Seeborg also wrote that the MPP lacked sufficient safeguards for ensuring that people who want to apply for asylum are not returned "to places where they face undue risk to their lives or freedom."

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups on behalf of 11 asylum seekers from Central America. It argued that requiring the migrants to wait in Mexico violated humanitarian protections offered under U.S. and international law.

"The court strongly rejected the Trump administration's unprecedented and illegal policy of forcing asylum seekers to return to Mexico without hearing their claims," said deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, Judy Rabinovitz in a statement. "Try as it may, the Trump administration cannot simply ignore our laws in order to accomplish its goal of preventing people from seeking asylum in the United States."

The ruling, even if its implementation is delayed, is a setback for the Trump administration's which says its hardline immigration policies are an appropriate response to a crisis at the border. The administration had hoped that the asylum protocols, dubbed by some officials as Remain in Mexico, would discourage migrants from seeking refuge in the U.S.

Last week, Nielsen had ordered Customs and Border Protection to "immediately expand" enforcement of the Migrant Protection Protocols beyond its roll out at the ports of entry at San Ysidro and Calexico, Calif., and El Paso, Texas. The expansion was to have included the entire 2,000-mile border.

On Sunday, a day before the ruling, Nielsen resigned from her post amid reports that other top immigration officials also will be replaced.

Judge Seeborg gave the government until 5 p.m. ET on Friday to appeal his ruling. The Justice Department did not respond to an email request for comment.</s>A U.S. judge on Monday halted the Trump administration’s policy of sending some asylum seekers back across the southern border to wait out their cases in Mexico, stopping a program the government planned to use to stem a recent flood of migrants.

The ruling is slated to take effect on Friday, according to the order by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco. The preliminary injunction will apply nationwide.

The program was launched in January and was one of many policies aimed at slowing rising numbers of immigrants arriving at the border, many of them families from Central America, that swelled last month to the highest level in a decade.

Because of limits on how long children are legally allowed to be held in detention, many of the families are released to await U.S. immigration court hearings, a process that can take years because of ballooning backlogs.

The Trump administration said last week it planned to expand the program of sending some migrants to wait out their U.S. court dates in Mexican border cities, under a policy known as Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP.

The government argued MPP was needed because so many asylum seekers spend years living in the United States and never appear for their court hearings before their claim is denied and an immigration judge orders them to be deported.

However, Seeborg said that the Immigration and Nationalization Act does not authorize the government to return asylum seekers to Mexico the way the government has applied it. He also said the policy lacks safeguards to protect refugees from threats to their life or freedom.

A U.S. Department of Justice spokesman declined to comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The judge said the government shall permit the 11 plaintiffs in the case to enter the United States beginning on Sunday. He said the government still retained the right to detain the asylum-seekers pending the outcome of their case.

The ruling can be appealed, and the government could seek a stay of the injunction until the appeals process runs its course.

“This is a great ruling,” said Judy Rabinovitz, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which was one of the groups that brought the case.

“This is what they were planning on implementing on a large scale. That would have been a complete game changer in the way our asylum system works,” she said.

Rabinovitz said the groups that brought the lawsuit needed to discuss what could be done for the hundreds of refugees who are awaiting their cases in Mexico. She said as their cases are heard, they will be returned to the United States, but that could take months.

The plaintiffs include legal service organizations and migrants who fled Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to escape what they said was extreme violence, rape and death threats.

Gabriela Orellana, 26, an asylum seeker from El Salvador who was scheduled to have her first hearing on Tuesday, was delighted by the news of the judge’s ruling.

“I’m crying from happiness,” she told Reuters. She is not one of the plaintiffs in the case.

Orellana said she fled El Salvador with her 8-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son after she was shot by a gang member. She has been in Tijuana since January and has waited nearly two months for her first interview with U.S. immigration authorities.

MPP was based on a decades-old law that says migrants who enter from a contiguous country can be returned there to wait out their deportation case, although the provision had never been used in the way the administration has applied it.

Civil rights groups sued, arguing the policy violated U.S. and international law by returning refugees to dangerous border towns where they would be unable to get legal counsel or notices of hearings.

Apprehensions by border agents were on track to top 100,000 in March, the highest level in a decade, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

While illegal border crossings were higher in the early 2000s, most of those apprehended at that time were single men, often from Mexico.

Kirstjen Nielsen resigned as Secretary of Homeland Security, the department that oversees immigration, on Sunday to be replaced temporarily by Kevin McAleenan, presently commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

A congressional official familiar with the matter said some in Congress believe Trump forced out Nielsen in part because she was trying to obey laws on treatment of refugees, granting of amnesty and separation of families.</s>A federal judge in California blocked the Trump administration from requiring asylum seekers to return to Mexico as they await court hearings in the U.S. But the judge delayed implementing his ruling to give the government time to appeal.

U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco wrote in a 27-page ruling that current U.S. law does not authorize the Department of Homeland Security to enact the Migrant Protection Protocols, first announced in a December 2018 memo by outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen. Seeborg also wrote that the MPP lacked sufficient safeguards for ensuring that people who want to apply for asylum are not returned "to places where they face undue risk to their lives or freedom."

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups on behalf of 11 asylum seekers from Central America. It argued that requiring the migrants to wait in Mexico violated humanitarian protections offered under U.S. and international law.

"The court strongly rejected the Trump administration's unprecedented and illegal policy of forcing asylum seekers to return to Mexico without hearing their claims," said deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, Judy Rabinovitz in a statement. "Try as it may, the Trump administration cannot simply ignore our laws in order to accomplish its goal of preventing people from seeking asylum in the United States."

The ruling, even if its implementation is delayed, is a setback for the Trump administration's which says its hardline immigration policies are an appropriate response to a crisis at the border. The administration had hoped that the asylum protocols, dubbed by some officials as Remain in Mexico, would discourage migrants from seeking refuge in the U.S.

Last week, Nielsen had ordered Customs and Border Protection to "immediately expand" enforcement of the Migrant Protection Protocols beyond its roll out at the ports of entry at San Ysidro and Calexico, Calif., and El Paso, Texas. The expansion was to have included the entire 2,000-mile border.

On Sunday, a day before the ruling, Nielsen resigned from her post amid reports that other top immigration officials also will be replaced.

Judge Seeborg gave the government until 5 p.m. ET on Friday to appeal his ruling. The Justice Department did not respond to an email request for comment.</s>A federal judge in California issued an order Monday blocking the Trump administration's policy of returning some asylum-seekers to Mexico while they wait for a court appearance.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Seeborg's nationwide ruling will not go into effect until Friday, to give the administration time to appeal.

Outgoing Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen announced the launch of the Migrant Protection Protocols in San Diego, the country's busiest border crossing, in January. Under the policy, Customs and Border Protection officers and agents have the authority to turn around asylum-seekers crossing in the San Diego and El Paso sectors. Families seeking asylum had previously been allowed to stay in the United States while awaiting their court hearings.

A lawsuit filed on behalf of 11 asylum-seekers from Central America had argued that being sent back across the border could expose them to "undue risk to their lives or freedom."

Seeborg found the asylum-seekers had enough of a case to issue a temporary order blocking the policy.

Advocacy groups involved in the suit hailed the decision.

“Remain in Mexico leaves individuals and families fleeing persecution stranded on the other side of the border, when what they need and deserve under our laws is protection in America,” Archi Pyati, chief of policy for Tahirih Justice Center, said. “This policy goes against basic tenets of fairness, and makes it all but impossible for us to do our jobs. We are glad to see justice served.”

NBC News reported last week that Nielsen announced that she would be increasing the number of Central American asylum-seekers who are made to wait in Mexico until they can see a U.S. immigration judge.

Seeborg's ruling means "you can't do this where you’ve been doing it and you can’t expand it where you want to expand it," Judy Rabinovitz, who argued the case for the ACLU, told NBC News.

She said the policy had been "a complete change in how our asylum system works," and it had left asylum-seekers without any supports in Mexico, where there's a "lot of hostility towards migrants and a lot of lawlessness involving Mexican authorities." She estimated that hundreds of asylum-seekers had already been sent back into Mexico, with no clear way of coming back in for their hearings.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Any appeal of the decision would be heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, an appeals court that President Donald Trump has repeatedly blasted as a "disgrace" for ruling against his policies.

Daily border crossings have surpassed a 13-year high as the number of undocumented Central American migrants, mainly families with children seeking asylum, has increased in recent months.

In her announcement, Nielsen directed border agents to "return hundreds of additional migrants per day above current rates." It is not known how many migrants have been returned already.

The administration hopes that making asylum seekers wait outside the U.S. will discourage weak claims and help reduce an immigration court backlog of more than 800,000 cases.</s>(Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Monday halted the Trump administration’s policy of sending some asylum seekers back across the southern border to wait out their cases in Mexico, stopping a program the government planned to use to stem a recent flood of migrants.

The ruling is slated to take effect on Friday, according to the order by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco. The preliminary injunction will apply nationwide.

The program was launched in January and was one of many policies aimed at slowing rising numbers of immigrants arriving at the border, many of them families from Central America, that swelled last month to the highest level in a decade.

Because of limits on how long children are legally allowed to be held in detention, many of the families are released to await U.S. immigration court hearings, a process that can take years because of ballooning backlogs.

The Trump administration said last week it planned to expand the program of sending some migrants to wait out their U.S. court dates in Mexican border cities, under a policy known as Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP.

The government argued MPP was needed because so many asylum seekers spend years living in the United States and never appear for their court hearings before their claim is denied and an immigration judge orders them to be deported.

However, Seeborg said that the Immigration and Nationalization Act does not authorize the government to return asylum seekers to Mexico the way the government has applied it. He also said the policy lacks safeguards to protect refugees from threats to their life or freedom.

A U.S. Department of Justice spokesman declined to comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The judge said the government shall permit the 11 plaintiffs in the case to enter the United States beginning on Sunday. He said the government still retained the right to detain the asylum-seekers pending the outcome of their case.

The ruling can be appealed, and the government could seek a stay of the injunction until the appeals process runs its course.

“This is a great ruling,” said Judy Rabinovitz, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which was one of the groups that brought the case.

“This is what they were planning on implementing on a large scale. That would have been a complete game changer in the way our asylum system works,” she said.

Rabinovitz said the groups that brought the lawsuit needed to discuss what could be done for the hundreds of refugees who are awaiting their cases in Mexico. She said as their cases are heard, they will be returned to the United States, but that could take months.

The plaintiffs include legal service organizations and migrants who fled Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to escape what they said was extreme violence, rape and death threats.

Gabriela Orellana, 26, an asylum seeker from El Salvador who was scheduled to have her first hearing on Tuesday, was delighted by the news of the judge’s ruling.

“I’m crying from happiness,” she told Reuters. She is not one of the plaintiffs in the case.

Orellana said she fled El Salvador with her 8-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son after she was shot by a gang member. She has been in Tijuana since January and has waited nearly two months for her first interview with U.S. immigration authorities.

MPP was based on a decades-old law that says migrants who enter from a contiguous country can be returned there to wait out their deportation case, although the provision had never been used in the way the administration has applied it.

Civil rights groups sued, arguing the policy violated U.S. and international law by returning refugees to dangerous border towns where they would be unable to get legal counsel or notices of hearings.

Apprehensions by border agents were on track to top 100,000 in March, the highest level in a decade, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

While illegal border crossings were higher in the early 2000s, most of those apprehended at that time were single men, often from Mexico.

Kirstjen Nielsen resigned as Secretary of Homeland Security, the department that oversees immigration, on Sunday to be replaced temporarily by Kevin McAleenan, presently commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

A congressional official familiar with the matter said some in Congress believe Trump forced out Nielsen in part because she was trying to obey laws on treatment of refugees, granting of amnesty and separation of families.</s>(Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Monday halted the Trump administration’s policy of sending some asylum seekers back across the southern border to wait out their cases in Mexico, stopping a program the government planned to expand to stem a recent flood of migrants.

The ruling is slated to take effect on Friday, according to the order by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco. The preliminary injunction will apply nationwide.

In a late night tweet, U.S. President Donald Trump said, “A 9th Circuit Judge just ruled that Mexico is too dangerous for migrants. So unfair to the U.S. OUT OF CONTROL!”

The program was launched in January and was one of many policies aimed at slowing rising numbers of immigrants arriving at the border, many of them families from Central America, that swelled last month to the highest in a decade.

Because of limits on how long children are legally allowed to be held in detention, many of the families are released to await U.S. immigration court hearings, a process that can take years because of ballooning backlogs.

The Trump administration said last week it planned to expand the program of sending some migrants to wait out their U.S. court dates in Mexican border cities under a policy known as Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP.

The government argued MPP was needed because so many asylum seekers spend years living in the United States and never appear for their court hearings before their claim is denied and an immigration judge orders them to be deported.

Seeborg said the Immigration and Nationalization Act, however, does not authorize the government to return asylum seekers to Mexico the way the government has applied it.

He also said the policy lacks safeguards to protect refugees from threats to their life or freedom.

Justice Department data show that while the percentage of immigration court cases completed “in absentia” - when the foreign citizen fails to show - has risen in recent years, the majority of immigrants show up for their hearings.

A U.S. Department of Justice spokesman declined to comment on Monday’s ruling. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Mexican foreign ministry considers the ruling “an internal decision” of the United States, a spokesman said.

Seeborg said the government shall permit the 11 plaintiffs in the case to enter the United States beginning on Sunday. He said the government still retained the right to detain the asylum-seekers pending the outcome of their case.

The ruling can be appealed, and the government could seek a stay of the injunction until the appeals process runs its course.

A migrant woman ties her hair outside her tent at a shelter in Tijuana, Mexico April 6, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

LAWYERS, MIGRANTS GRATIFIED

Still, lawyers for migrants were gratified by the decision.

“This is a great ruling,” said Judy Rabinovitz, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which was one of the groups that brought the case.

“This is what they were planning on implementing on a large scale. That would have been a complete game changer in the way our asylum system works,” she said.

Rabinovitz said the groups that brought the lawsuit needed to discuss what could be done for the hundreds of refugees who are awaiting their cases in Mexico.

She said as their cases are heard, they will be returned to the United States, but that could take months.

The plaintiffs include legal service organizations and migrants who fled Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to escape what they said was extreme violence, rape and death threats.

Gabriela Orellana, 26, an asylum seeker from El Salvador who was scheduled to have her first hearing on Tuesday, was delighted by news of the judge’s ruling.

“I’m crying from happiness,” she told Reuters. She is not one of the plaintiffs in the case.

Orellana said she fled El Salvador with her 8-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son after she was shot by a gang member. She has been in Tijuana since January and has waited nearly two months for her first interview with U.S. immigration authorities.

Others in Tijuana were more cautious.

“Will I be allowed to go or do I have to stay?” asked Veronica Galdamez, who said she fled San Salvador in 2018 after gang members stole her food cart and, pointing a gun at her, told her she had 24 hours to get out of the city.

“I feel real happiness, but also uncertainty, because I don’t know if this applies to me,” Galdamez said.

MPP was based on a decades-old law that says migrants who enter from a contiguous country can be returned there to wait out their deportation case, although the provision had never been used in the way the administration has applied it.

Civil rights groups sued, arguing the policy violated U.S. and international law by returning refugees to dangerous border towns where they would be unable to get legal counsel or notices of hearings.

Kirstjen Nielsen resigned as Secretary of Homeland Security, the department that oversees immigration, on Sunday.

Slideshow (7 Images)

A congressional official familiar with the matter said some in Congress believe Trump forced out Nielsen in part because she was trying to obey laws on treatment of refugees, granting of amnesty and separation of families.

(This story corrects spelling of last name of migrant in paragraphs 25-26 to Galdamez, not Galdames)</s>A federal judge in California blocked the Trump administration from requiring asylum seekers to return to Mexico as they await court hearings in the U.S. But the judge delayed implementing his ruling to give the government time to appeal.

U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco wrote in a 27-page ruling that current U.S. law does not authorize the Department of Homeland Security to enact the Migrant Protection Protocols, first announced in a December 2018 memo by outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen. Seeborg also wrote that the MPP lacked sufficient safeguards for ensuring that people who want to apply for asylum are not returned "to places where they face undue risk to their lives or freedom."

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups on behalf of 11 asylum seekers from Central America. It argued that requiring the migrants to wait in Mexico violated humanitarian protections offered under U.S. and international law.

"The court strongly rejected the Trump administration's unprecedented and illegal policy of forcing asylum seekers to return to Mexico without hearing their claims," said deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, Judy Rabinovitz in a statement. "Try as it may, the Trump administration cannot simply ignore our laws in order to accomplish its goal of preventing people from seeking asylum in the United States."

The ruling, even if its implementation is delayed, is a setback for the Trump administration's which says its hardline immigration policies are an appropriate response to a crisis at the border. The administration had hoped that the asylum protocols, dubbed by some officials as Remain in Mexico, would discourage migrants from seeking refuge in the U.S.

Last week, Nielsen had ordered Customs and Border Protection to "immediately expand" enforcement of the Migrant Protection Protocols beyond its roll out at the ports of entry at San Ysidro and Calexico, Calif., and El Paso, Texas. The expansion was to have included the entire 2,000-mile border.

On Sunday, a day before the ruling, Nielsen resigned from her post amid reports that other top immigration officials also will be replaced.

Judge Seeborg gave the government until 5 p.m. ET on Friday to appeal his ruling. The Justice Department did not respond to an email request for comment.</s>A U.S. judge on Monday halted the Trump administration's policy of sending some asylum seekers back across the southern border to wait out their cases in Mexico, stopping a program the government planned to expand to stem a recent flood of migrants.

The ruling is slated to take effect on Friday, according to the order by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco. The preliminary injunction will apply nationwide.

In a late night tweet, U.S. President Donald Trump said, "A 9th Circuit Judge just ruled that Mexico is too dangerous for migrants. So unfair to the U.S. OUT OF CONTROL!"

The program was launched in January and was one of many policies aimed at slowing rising numbers of immigrants arriving at the border, many of them families from Central America, that swelled last month to the highest in a decade.

Because of limits on how long children are legally allowed to be held in detention, many of the families are released to await U.S. immigration court hearings, a process that can take years because of ballooning backlogs.

The Trump administration said last week it planned to expand the program of sending some migrants to wait out their U.S. court dates in Mexican border cities under a policy known as Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP.

The government argued MPP was needed because so many asylum seekers spend years living in the United States and never appear for their court hearings before their claim is denied and an immigration judge orders them to be deported.

Seeborg said the Immigration and Nationalization Act, however, does not authorize the government to return asylum seekers to Mexico the way the government has applied it.

He also said the policy lacks safeguards to protect refugees from threats to their life or freedom.

Justice Department data show that while the percentage of immigration court cases completed "in absentia" - when the foreign citizen fails to show - has risen in recent years, the majority of immigrants show up for their hearings.

A U.S. Department of Justice spokesman declined to comment on Monday's ruling. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Mexican foreign ministry considers the ruling "an internal decision" of the United States, a spokesman said.

Seeborg said the government shall permit the 11 plaintiffs in the case to enter the United States beginning on Sunday. He said the government still retained the right to detain the asylum-seekers pending the outcome of their case.

The ruling can be appealed, and the government could seek a stay of the injunction until the appeals process runs its course.</s>April 8 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Monday issued an injunction halting the Trump administration’s policy of sending some asylum seekers back across the southern border to wait out their deportation cases in Mexico.

The ruling is slated to take effect on Friday, according to the order by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco. The preliminary injunction will apply nationwide.

The ruling removes at least temporarily a controversial Trump administration strategy aimed at slowing a flood of immigrants, many of them families from Central America, that swelled last month to the highest level in a decade.

Because of limits on how long children are legally allowed to be held in detention, many of the families are released to await U.S. immigration court hearings, a process that can take years because of ballooning backlogs.

In response, the Trump administration in January started sending some migrants to wait out their U.S. court dates in Mexican border cities, under a policy known as Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP.

Seeborg said his ruling turned on the narrow question of whether the Trump administration had followed administrative law in implementing the policy.

“The legal question is not whether the MPP is a wise, intelligent, or humane policy, or whether it is the best approach for addressing the circumstances the executive branch contends constitute a crisis,” wrote Seeborg.

The judge said the government shall permit the 11 plaintiffs in the case to enter the United States beginning on Sunday. He said the government still retained the right to detain the asylum-seekers pending the outcome of their case.

MPP was rolled out in January. The government argued it was needed because so many asylum seekers spend years living in the United States and never appear for their court hearings before their claim is denied and an immigration judge orders them to be deported.

MPP was based on a decades-old law that says migrants who enter from a contiguous country can be returned there to wait out their deportation case, although the provision had never been used in the way the administration has applied it.

Civil rights groups sued, arguing the policy violated U.S. and international law by returning refugees to dangerous border towns where they would be unable to get legal counsel or notices of hearings.

Apprehensions by border agents were on track to top 100,000 in March, the highest level in a decade, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

While illegal border crossings were higher in the early 2000s, most of those apprehended at that time were single men, often from Mexico.

Gabriela Orellana, 26, an asylum seeker from El Salvador who was scheduled to have her first hearing on Tuesday, was delighted by the news of the judge’s ruling.

Orellana said she fled El Salvador with her 8-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son after she was shot by a gang member. She has been in Tijuana since January and has waited nearly two months for her first interview with U.S. immigration authorities. (Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; additional reporting by Andrew Hay Editing by Leslie Adler and Sonya Hepinstall)</s>Editor's note: This story has been updated throughout

A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s policy of returning some asylum seekers to Mexico as they wait for their hearings in an American immigration court.

The Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as “Remain in Mexico,” were expanded to include El Paso's ports of entry last month after beginning in California’s San Ysidiro Port of Entry in January.

It was immediately met with a backlash from immigrant rights groups and attorneys who said migrants could be in danger in violent Mexican cities and that being in Mexico makes communicating with their U.S.-based attorneys more challenging.

California-based U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg ordered the Trump administration to halt the program by the end of the week. He put his ruling on hold until Friday to allow the government time to seek a stay of his order, but in his 27-page order Seeborg said that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their claims.

“While the precise degree of risk and specific harms that plaintiffs might suffer in this case may be debatable, there is no real question that it includes the possibility of irreparable injury," the judge wrote.

The ruling is yet another blow – at least temporarily – to a White House that has put forth multiple policies to stem the tide of asylum seekers. It also comes a day after the resignation of former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen M. Nielsen, who was reportedly pushed out after the president blamed her for being unable to stop the flow of asylum seekers.

The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Center for Gender and Refugee Studies. They argued the policy violates the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Administrative Procedure Act and international human rights protocols not to return people to dangerous countries.

“The court strongly rejected the Trump administration’s unprecedented and illegal policy of forcing asylum seekers to return to Mexico without hearing their claims,” Judy Rabinovitz, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement. "Try as it may, the Trump administration cannot simply ignore our laws in order to accomplish its goal of preventing people from seeking asylum in the United States.”

As of Friday, 169 migrants had been returned to Mexico from Texas, according to Enrique Valenzuela, the director of Ciudad Juárez’s Centro de Atención a Migrantes, a migrant transition facility operated by the Chihuahua state government.

Rabinovitz told the Tribune that asylum seekers who have already been returned to Mexico under the program won’t be required to return there after their first court appearance in the United States. But it’s unclear whether they will be able to return to the United States earlier than that.

“They cannot be sent back to Mexico, assuming this injunction holds,” she said. “But we’re going to have to explore if there is some way to get them relief sooner [than the court date].”
U.S. district judge Richard Seeborg halts the Trump administration’s policy of sending some asylum seekers to Mexico while their cases are pending in the United States. The national injunction will take effect Friday.