Washington, DC – Several immigrant rights groups in the United States, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s ban on asylum claims.
The case is the latest attempt to oppose Trump’s hardline immigration policies, which have targeted people already inside of the country as well as those seeking safety from abroad.
Like other lawsuits ongoing against the Trump administration, Monday’s complaint contends that the president overstepped his constitutional authority and violated existing law.
Currently, it is legal for asylum seekers to cross into the US if they are fleeing persecution.
“This is an unprecedented power grab that will put countless lives in danger,” Lee Gallant, the deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement.
“No president has the authority to unilaterally override the protections Congress has afforded those fleeing danger.”
The complaint cites domestic legislation and international treaty obligations that require the US government to allow individuals to apply for asylum. That includes the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
“Via the Immigration and Nationality Act, Congress has created a comprehensive statutory system allowing noncitizens fleeing persecution or torture to seek protection in the United States,” the lawsuit reads.
“Under the Proclamation, the government is doing just what Congress by statute decreed that the United States must not do. It is returning asylum seekers — not just single adults, but families too — to countries where they face persecution or torture.”
A day-one proclamation
Monday’s complaint takes direct aim at one of the proclamations Trump signed on the first day of his second term.
Shortly after his inauguration on January 20, Trump unveiled a document entitled, “Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion”.
In it, he declared that undocumented immigrants “are restricted from invoking provisions of the INA that would permit their continued presence in the United States”.
The Republican leader cited risks to “national security” as well as the possibility of “communicable disease” as his rationale. He also argued that the southern border of the US had been “overwhelmed” with entries.
“I therefore direct that entry into the United States of such aliens be suspended until I issue a finding that the invasion at the southern border has ceased,” Trump wrote.
The Republican leader had long campaigned on a hardline approach to immigration, including the idea of sealing the border to asylum seekers.
His 2024 re-election bid was defined by the same firebrand rhetoric, including nativist assertions that the US was being overrun by a migrant “invasion”.
Trump repeatedly blamed undocumented people for the country’s woes, from violent crime to unemployment.
A backlash
But groups like the ACLU have sought to push back against Trump’s policies, using the court system to question their legal merits.
In Monday’s case, the lawsuit argues that Trump’s proclamation not only contradicts US law but also its obligations under international treaties.
The US, for example, ratified the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, a treaty that establishes protections for refugees.
In a statement on Monday, Jennifer Babaie, the director of advocacy and legal services at the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in Texas, said the lawsuit shows that she and others “will not stand idly by as our immigration laws are manipulated”.
“Regardless of any person’s individual beliefs on immigration, any government attempt to blatantly violate our laws is a serious issue impacting all communities across the country,” Babaie said.
The Texas-based group is one of four named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, along with the Texas Civil Rights Project, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Service (RAICES) and the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project.
Wave of legal challenges
But the immigration actions Trump has taken in the first weeks of his second term extend beyond seeking asylum.
Even in the first hours of his presidency, Trump signed several executive actions designed to limit immigration and expel undocumented people already in the US.
Trump increased immigration enforcement activities, surged troops to the US border, suspended the US refugee programme for 90 days, and cancelled an online application used by asylum seekers to schedule US immigration appointments.
Some asylum seekers had been waiting for months for the appointments they booked on the app, known as CBP One. The app’s removal nullified their scheduled meetings, leaving them in limbo.
In the aftermath, rights groups launched a legal challenge questioning the dissolution of CBP One.
Other legal challenges seek to oppose Trump’s expansion of “expedited removal” processes, which would quickly expel undocumented individuals from the country.
And others have sought to overturn a stop-work order that halted funding for legal services for immigrants being held in detention.
Meanwhile, advocacy groups and various state governments have lodged at least five lawsuits against Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship in the US.
A federal judge in January quickly blocked Trump’s order, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional”.