A group of immigrant advocacy organizations sued the Biden administration on Wednesday over its executive action limiting asylum processing last week.
The American Civil Liberties Union and others have presented the process on behalf of the Las Américas Immigrant Defense Center and the Center for Education and Legal Services for Refugees and Immigrants.
In a complaint filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., lawyers for the groups argued that President Joe Biden’s recent executive action that temporarily limited asylum processing violated a statute enacted by Congress that allows migrants to claim asylum “whether or not they enter ” at ports of entry.
“While Congress has placed some limitations on the right to seek asylum over the years, it has never allowed the executive branch to categorically prohibit asylum based on where a noncitizen enters the country,” the lawsuit says.
“This simple statutory text prevents the President and the Executive Branch from prohibiting asylum to noncitizens based on their manner of entry into the United States,” it continues.
Biden issued a executive action last week, temporarily limiting asylum processing as there were an average of 2,500 encounters or more over seven consecutive days. The action came into effect immediately, as daily meetings reached a daily average of more than 4,000according to homeland security officials. According to the actionthe border would reopen 14 days after the secretary of homeland security determined there had been seven consecutive days with an average of fewer than 1,500 daily encounters between ports of entry.
Some exceptions are allowed, including for unaccompanied children.
Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrant Rights Project, who championed the challenge to the Trump administration’s asylum ban, had viewed the group’s plans to sue shortly after Biden announced the lawsuit last week.
“We had no alternative but to sue”, Gelernt said in a statement Wednesday. “The administration does not have the unilateral authority to bypass Congress and bar asylum based on how someone enters the country, a point the courts made abundantly clear when the Trump administration unsuccessfully attempted a nearly identical ban.”
White House Assistant Press Secretary Angelo Fernández Hernández said the administration took action “because encounters at the border remain very high.”
“The administration will continue to enforce our immigration laws – those who have no legal basis to remain in the United States will be removed. We would like to refer them to the Department of Justice for questions regarding the litigation,” Hernández said in a statement Wednesday.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said the department cannot comment on pending litigation.
“The Border Security rule is legal, it is fundamental to strengthening border security and it is already having an impact. The disputed actions remain in effect and we will continue to implement them,” DHS spokeswoman Naree Ketudat said in a statement. “Noncitizens without authorization should not come to our southern border. There are serious consequences for illegal crossing.”
Biden took the action by invoking provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, including 212(f), which gives the president authority to suspend the entry of some migrants if their entry is deemed “harmful to the interests of the United States.”
Under the same provision, the Trump administration attempted to enact an asylum ban in 2018, which was blocked by the courts.
There were 179,725 encounters along the southern border in April, a slight decrease from recent months, according to Protection of United States customs and borders. More than 1.5 million encounters have been recorded this fiscal year to date, meaning fiscal 2024 has so far surpassed fiscal years 2023, 2022 and 2021 in encounters, according to the data.
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
