The White House on Monday blasted a federal judge’s ruling earlier in the day to reimpose a block on the implementation of an administration policy that limits migrants’ ability to apply for asylum at the southern border.
Press secretary Stephanie Grisham called U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar’s decision “a gift to human smugglers and traffickers.”{mosads}
“The Attorney General has recently explained the grave threat such injunctions pose to our Constitutional order,” she said in a statement. “Immigration and border security policy cannot be run by any single district court judge who decides to issue a nationwide injunction.”
Grisham said the administration has a pending request for the Supreme Court to throw out the injunction.
Tigar issued a nationwide injunction in July blocking the administration’s rule, which would make most asylum-seekers who pass through another country before reaching the U.S. ineligible for asylum, with exceptions for victims of trafficking and migrants who have been denied asylum in the countries they traveled through.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Tigar’s initial ruling but narrowed the injunction to cover only border states within its jurisdiction — California and Arizona — before sending the question back to Tigar.
Tigar said Monday that the injunction should apply nationwide because the asylum rule represents a case where “such breadth is necessary to remedy a plaintiff’s harm.”
Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan said during a briefing with reporters on Monday that he was “frustrated” by the ruling and described it as a result of “unprecedented judicial activism.”
The White House and Attorney General William Barr have repeatedly complained of “judicial activism” and argued that nationwide injunctions have been wielded to block administration policy.