Ninth Circuit to Hear Arguments on Whether Asylum Seekers Turned Back at Ports of Entry Should be Subject to Asylum Ban

 A three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit will hear arguments at 10 a.m. PST on Thursday in San Francisco on a motion by the government to prevent application of a court order blocking the Trump administration’s asylum ban from being applied to thousands of asylum seekers who were prevented from accessing the U.S. asylum process before the ban was implemented.

The motion was filed in the lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s policy of turning back asylum seekers at ports of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border. A federal district judge blocked the administration’s asylum ban from being applied to this class of asylum seekers. The government is seeking a stay of the injunction pending the appeal.  That stay request will be the focus of the oral arguments on Thursday. If the Ninth Circuit grants the stay, asylum seekers who attempted to follow the rules and wait patiently in Mexico, as the government told them to do, will be subject to an asylum ban the government adopted while forcing them to wait—at least until the government’s appeal of the injunction is decided, which could take months.

The case is Al Otro Lado v. Wolf, a class action lawsuit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the American Immigration Council on behalf of individual asylum seekers and the legal services organization Al Otro Lado (AOL).  Here are papers filed in the Ninth Circuit.

The panel that will hear the arguments is composed of Chief Judge Sidney Thomas (Bill Clinton appointee), and Circuit Judges Marsha Berzon  (Clinton appointee) and Daniel Bress (Trump appointee). 

KJ