White House ‘pleased’ about Supreme Court decision on asylum rule

The White House on Wednesday touted the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the enforcement of the Trump administration’s asylum ban, saying it will help fix what the president has called a border crisis.

“We are pleased the Supreme Court has ruled our Administration can implement important, needed fixes to the broken asylum system,” deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement shortly after the court’s Wednesday ruling. 

“This greatly helps build on the progress we’ve made addressing the crisis at our southern border and will ultimately make American communities safer,” Gidley added.{mosads}

The decision allows for the rule, which places further requirements on migrants seeking asylum in the U.S., to be enforced as it is challenged in courts. 

“The district court’s erroneous nationwide injunction was another in a series of overreaching orders that allowed a single, non-elected district court judge to override policy decisions for the entire Nation. While there is much more work still to be done, thankfully the Supreme Court took a decisive step here and rejected the lower court’s egregious ruling,” Gidley said. 

Two of the court’s four liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dissented. 

The rule would make people seeking asylum who pass through another country before the United States first seek asylum in the country through which they are traveling. 

“Once again the Executive Branch has issued a rule that seeks to upend longstanding practices regarding refugees who seek shelter from persecution,” Sotomayor wrote in the dissenting argument.

The Trump administration has long sought to limit migration across the U.S.-Mexico border in what administration officials have called a “crisis” at the border.

Before the White House’s statement, President Trump tweeted the court’s decision was a “WIN for the Border on Asylum!” 

The White House turned to the Supreme Court to get approval for the rule, after U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar issued a primary injunction preventing the enforcement of the rule. The rule is challenged by civil rights groups. 

The California-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Tigar’s primary injunction preventing the rule’s enforcement, but only in California and Arizona. 

Tigar re-established a nationwide ban on the rule Monday, prompting the administration to ask the court to lift the order stopping it from being implemented on Tuesday.