Appeals Court Allows Biden Administration Asylum Rule to Stay in Place; Appeals Court Lets Biden Asylum Policy Temporarily Stay in Place

A federal appeals court stayed a lower court’s ruling on Thursday, allowing President Joe Biden’s policy limiting migrants’ ability to seek asylum to stay in place while litigation proceeds.

In a 2-1 decision, Clinton-appointed judges William Fletcher and Richard Paez of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued the stay and ordered the appeal expedited.

Biden’s policy prohibits some migrants from applying for asylum if they did not first apply for protections from other countries while traveling to the United States. Biden’s policy went into effect on May 12 and was slated to have a two-year lifespan. The president announced this policy after his administration ended Title 42.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar struck down Biden’s rule, deeming it “arbitrary and capricious.” Tigar’s ruling would have terminated the asylum rule on August 8 had the appeals court not taken action.

Tigar compared the Biden rule to a similar Trump administration rule he struck down in 2019.

In his dissent, Judge Lawrence Van Dyke noted the Biden policy is not “meaningfully different” from the Trump rule and suggested political bias was at play because the appeals court previously overturned the Trump administration’s version of the policy. —>READ MORE HERE

Appeals Court Lets Biden Asylum Policy Temporarily Stay in Place:

A federal appeals court Thursday allowed the Biden administration to enforce its new asylum rules while litigation continues over the policy. It is the central pillar of President Biden’s post-Title 42 border enforcement efforts.

In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed to a Biden administration request and blocked for now a lower court decision that would have barred the administration from enforcing its new policy.

The policy, commonly referred to as a transit ban, generally requires migrants coming to the U.S. border to have asked for protection in another country and have been denied in order to be eligible to ask for asylum in the U.S.

The Biden administration adopted the new policy after the expiration of Title 42, a public-health law used during the pandemic that allowed officials to simply turn away asylum seekers at the border.

The Biden policy closely resembles a measure used by the Trump administration.

Immigration lawyers and advocates have argued that because most Latin American countries have either fledgling or nonexistent asylum protocols, the rule is nearly impossible for migrants to follow, rendering the policy as an asylum ban for most migrants caught crossing the border illegally into the U.S.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar, appointed by former President Barack Obama, ruled that the new policy violates U.S. asylum laws that allow for anyone who enters the U.S. to ask for protection—regardless of how they arrived. Tigar also struck down a similar policy proposed by the Trump administration.

In a dissent to Thursday’s ruling, Judge Lawrence VanDyke said the Biden version of the asylum rule was nearly identical to the one proposed by the Trump administration and blocked by both Tigar and later the Ninth Circuit. —>READ MORE HERE

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