The White House on Tuesday vowed an appeal and angrily denounced an Obama-appointed judge who ruled against President Trump’s new get-tough policy to make migrants wait in Mexico while their asylum cases are being heard in the U.S.
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement that Judge Richard Seeborg’s ruling on Monday was the latest to feed the border crisis.
“We intend to appeal, and we will take all necessary action to defend the Executive Branch’s lawful efforts to resolve the crisis at our southern border,” she said.
Ms. Sanders said the Trump administration was using a law Congress wrote that explicitly allows the U.S. to return migrants back to the country they crossed from, and to make them wait there while their cases proceed through American immigration courts.
The administration’s “remain in Mexico” policy — dubbed the Migrant Protection Protocols in Washington-speak — was supposed to be a major part of Mr. Trump’s unilateral effort to stop the surge of illegal immigrants.
The thinking was that if they were forced to wait in Mexico, they would be unable to exploit loopholes in U.S. law to disappear into the shadows.
Judge Seeborg said the administration cut too many corners and didn’t provide enough protections for people who, though from Central America, would still have been in danger if they’d been forced to wait in Mexico.
Ms. Sanders called the ruling another judicial overreach against the president.
“Time and time again, we have seen a single district court unilaterally rewriting, suspending, or terminating immigration law for the whole nation – creating an unprecedented crisis on our southern border,” she said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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