An appeals court on Friday struck down the Trump administration’s closing of United States borders to asylum-seekers. 

An executive order by President Donald Trump on Inauguration Day last year, and later guidance to turn asylum-seekers around without a court hearing, are “unlawful” and “cast aside federal laws affording individuals the right to apply and be considered for asylum,” according to the ruling by a panel of the District of Columbia U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Advocates sued and said the administration’s action violated the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and the right to seek asylum based on fears of persecution.

Trump’s proclamation on Jan. 20, 2025, said “the sheer number of aliens entering the United States has overwhelmed the system and rendered many of the INA’s provisions ineffective,” and that  “an invasion is ongoing at the southern border, which requires the Federal Government to take measures to fulfill its obligation to the States.”

The executive order, along with later guidance, required anyone crossing the border without permission to be turned around or quickly deported without a court date. As of March, about 2.7 million people had been released at the border with immigration court cases in recent years, according to a Stateline analysis. 

Those numbers peaked at more than 100,000 a month at times in 2023 during the Biden administration, and dropped quickly to a few hundred a month after Trump’s 2025 order. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, speaking on Fox News, blamed the ruling on politics and called it “unsurprising.” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said the Department of Justice would seek further review of the decision. “We are sure we will be vindicated,” she wrote in an emailed statement to The Associated Press.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court Friday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order that disallowed immigrants claiming asylum at the southern border.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found that immigration law allows those fleeing persecution to apply for asylum. 

“Congress did not intend to grant the Executive the expansive removal authority it asserts,” Judge J. Michelle Childs wrote, adding that they upheld a lower court’s ruling.

The three panel judges who heard the case were Childs, Justin R. Walker and Cornelia T.L. Pillard. Walker, a Trump appointee, filed a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part from the majority.

Childs was appointed by former President Joe Biden and Pillard was appointed by former President Barack Obama. 

“The (Immigration Nationality Act) does not allow the President to remove Plaintiffs under summary removal procedures of his own making,” according to the ruling. “Nor does it allow the Executive to suspend Plaintiffs’ right to apply for asylum, deny Plaintiffs’ access to withholding of removal under the INA, or curtail mandatory procedures for adjudicating Plaintiffs’ Convention Against Torture claims.”

The White House did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment. 

“This decision puts an end to the inhumane Trump policy of sending people, including families with little children, back to horrific danger without even a hearing,” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt, who argued the appeal, said in a statement. “The court made clear that the president does not have the unilateral power to wipe away all of the asylum laws enacted by Congress.”

One of Trump’s first executive orders suspended entry to the southern border on the grounds that there was an “invasion,” which the administration claimed was a condition that allowed the president to invoke a section of the law to suspend asylum claims.

The executive order is part of Trump’s immigration crackdown, as he aims to conduct mass deportations of immigrants in the interior and cease migration to the U.S. through curbing access to asylum and refugee resettlement. 

In response to the order, immigration advocacy groups filed a class action lawsuit against the Trump administration. The groups who brought the suit were the ACLU, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, and Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project.

RAICES, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and the Florence Immigrant And Refugee Rights Project provide legal services to immigrants, and argued that Trump’s executive order harms the legal aid work of the individual plaintiffs.