Judge Orders Trump Administration To Admit 12,000 Refugees Into US

On Monday, a judge ordered the Trump administration to admit approximately 12,000 refugees into the United States, dealing a setback to the government’s efforts to reshape immigration policy.

The ruling clarified the limits set by an appeals court, which had previously allowed the suspension of the refugee admissions system. However, the court ruled that the administration must admit refugees who had already been granted refugee status and had travel plans to the U.S.

The Trump administration had argued in a hearing last week that it should only be required to admit 160 refugees who were scheduled to travel within two weeks of the executive order issued in January that halted the system.

But US District Judge Jamal Whitehead overruled the claim on Monday, saying “the government’s interpretation is, to put it mildly, ‘interpretive jiggerypokery’ of the highest order.

“It requires not just reading between the lines” of the appeal decision “but hallucinating new text that simply is not there,” Whitehead wrote in his order.

Initially, Judge Whitehead had blocked Trump’s executive order halting refugee admissions, ruling in February that the order likely violated the 1980 Refugee Act. However, his decision was overturned by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals a month later.

“Had the Ninth Circuit intended to impose a two-week limitation — one that would reduce the protected population from about 12,000 to 160 individuals — it would have done so explicitly,” Whitehead wrote.

“This Court will not entertain the government’s result-oriented rewriting of a judicial order that clearly says what it says,” he added.

The lawsuit was filed by Jewish refugee non-profit HIAS, Christian organization Church World Service, Lutheran Community Services Northwest, and several individuals. These groups argued in their February lawsuit that many individuals, who had sold all their belongings and were ready to travel, found themselves stranded after Trump’s order.

Refugee resettlement had been one of the few legal paths to US citizenship and was later expanded by President Joe Biden to include people affected by climate change.

Trump’s campaign had been marked by strong rhetoric against immigrants, and his administration also pushed for aggressive deportation policies, including high-profile military flights that deported handcuffed individuals to Latin American countries.