“I slept outside the transit center in the parking lot, along with other refugee families waiting to travel to the United States. In the morning, they told us President Trump cancelled all refugee travel.”
A federal appeals court has ruled that the Trump administration has the authority needed to limit the entry of new refugees in the United States, but stressed that the government must still accept and process asylum-seekers who entered the country before the president suspended the refugee admissions system.
According to The Associated Press, the appeals court’s decision narrows an earlier ruling issued by a Seattle-based federal judge, who determined that the Trump administration must continue admitting refugees.
In its ruling, the three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the president of the United States has the power to prevent classes of people from entering the country; the judges cited a 2018 ruling form the Supreme Court, which upheld Trump’s controversial ban on travelers from several Muslim-majority countries.
The appeals court, adds The Associated Press, ruled on an emergency appeal of U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead’s order. In the order, Whitehead opined that the executive’s power to suspend refugee admissions is bound by laws already passed by Congress, including the act that established the refugee admissions system.
Whitehead also noted that refugees seeking asylum from outside the country are often subject to dangerous conditions. In some cases, refugees sold their possessions to travel to the United States, only to be later informed that their authorization had been canceled.
The International Refugee Assistance Project, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of refugees and refugee-advocacy organizations, said that many of its clients have spent years waiting for their chance to enter the United States.
“When the Taliban took over Afghanistan, I was a student at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul,” said plaintiff “Ahmed,” who was finally “travel-ready” just before Trump issued his order. “For the past three years, I’ve been waiting for the chance to go the United States and reunite with my sister and her family. I have not seen her since 2021 and I have never met my youngest niece. I was so excited to join them.”
Another plaintiff, “Pacito,” is a refugee who fled conflict in the Congo when he was only 13 years old.
“When I was given the chance to move to America, it felt like I was being given a second chance at life,” Pacito said. “My family sold our belongings and bought new clothes and new shoes for our new life in the United States. But then the day before we were scheduled to travel, I received a call that our flight was cancelled. I hoped there was a mistake. That night, my wife, my baby, and I slept outside the transit center in the parking lot, along with other refugee families waiting to travel to the United States. In the morning, they told us President Trump cancelled all refugee travel.”
“Now I don’t know what we’re going to do, [and] we have nothing,” Pacito said.
Whitehead followed his first order with another, curtailing the Trump administration’s ability to cancel refugee resettlement contracts without cause.
International Refugee Assistance Project Melissa Keaney told The Associated Press that her organization is pleased that the appeals court left many of the lawsuit’s most relevant claims intact.
“We welcome this continued relief for tens of thousands of refugees who will now have the opportunity to restart their lives in the United States,” Keaney said.
Sources
Appeals court allows Trump administration to suspend approval of new refugees amid lawsuit
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