A divided federal appeals court ruled Friday that President Donald Trump's executive order suspending asylum claims at the southern border is unlawful, affirming a lower court decision and dealing the administration a significant legal setback in its effort to overhaul how the United States handles illegal immigration.
The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held, in a 2-1 decision, that the Immigration and Nationality Act gives migrants who reach U.S. soil the right to apply for asylum, and that no presidential proclamation can override that process. The ruling means that migrants who arrive at the border, whether at a legal port of entry or between them, can legally seek asylum as they could under previous administrations.
The decision lands at the center of a deepening legal war over executive power at the border. And the administration made clear it has no intention of backing down.
The D.C. Circuit's majority opinion, authored by Judge J. Michelle Childs, rejected the administration's claim that the president's power to suspend entry by proclamation carries implicit authority to remove people already present in the country. The court wrote:
"We conclude that the INA's text, structure, and history make clear that in supplying power to suspend entry by Presidential proclamation, Congress did not intend to grant the Executive the expansive removal authority it asserts."
The ruling went further. ABC News reported that the court stated plainly that the law "does not allow the President to remove Plaintiffs under summary removal procedures of his own making." Nor, the court held, does it allow the executive branch 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."
That language leaves little room for ambiguity about where this panel stands. But one judge dissented, and the administration's response suggests the legal battle is far from over.
Trump signed the executive order on Day 1 of his second term. He titled it "Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion." Its aim was straightforward: block illegal immigrants from seeking asylum and other forms of relief once they enter the United States, and allow for their swift removal from the country.
The order reflected a core promise of Trump's campaign, that the asylum system had been exploited as a loophole, allowing people who crossed the border illegally to remain in the country indefinitely while their claims worked through a backlogged immigration court system. The administration has consistently argued that the system, as it functioned under previous presidents, amounted to a de facto open door.
That argument found its way into the Department of Homeland Security's response to Friday's ruling. A DHS spokesperson said the department "strongly disagree" with the decision and warned that "this will not be the last word on this matter."
"America's asylum system was never intended to be used as a de facto amnesty program or a catch-all, get-out-of-deportation-free card. President Trump's top priority remains the screening and vetting of all aliens seeking to come, live, or work in the United States."
The spokesperson added: "We will use all of the tools in our toolbox to ensure that the integrity of our legal immigration system is upheld, fraud is uncovered and expeditiously addressed, and illegal aliens are removed from the country."
The administration's posture, combative, unapologetic, and forward-looking, signals that an appeal is all but certain. The AP reported that the Trump administration said it would seek further review, potentially from the full D.C. Circuit or the Supreme Court.
The appeals court decision affirmed an earlier ruling by U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss, who blocked the executive order months ago. National Review reported that Moss ruled the order was not authorized by the Constitution or the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Judge Moss wrote that "the INA, by its terms, provides the sole and exclusive means for removing people already present in the country." He gave the Trump administration 14 days to appeal, and the administration was expected to seek emergency relief, which it did, leading to Friday's ruling at the circuit level.
The New York Post reported that Moss found Trump lacked unilateral authority to replace the asylum procedures Congress established in the INA. The judge ruled that the president cannot substitute existing asylum rules "with an extra-statutory, extraregulatory regime" that removes people without a chance to apply for asylum.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, responding to the district court ruling at the time, called it the work of "a rogue district judge" who "took those tools away," and predicted a higher court would reverse it. That prediction did not hold at the circuit level, at least not with this panel.
Friday's ruling, if it stands, restores the pre-Trump status quo on asylum. Migrants who make it to U.S. soil, legally or otherwise, can seek asylum and invoke protections under the Convention Against Torture. The practical effect is that the federal government cannot summarily remove people who claim fear of persecution without running them through the statutory process Congress put in place.
For the administration, this is a familiar frustration. Federal courts have repeatedly intervened in Trump-era immigration enforcement, and recent appellate decisions involving Trump officials and deportation flights have shown that the legal terrain shifts constantly depending on the panel and the circuit.
ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt, who argued the appeal, framed the ruling in sweeping terms.
"This decision will potentially save the lives of thousands of people fleeing grave danger who were denied even a hearing under the Trump administration's horrific asylum ban."
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council told the AP that the ruling "confirms that President Trump cannot on his own bar people from seeking asylum."
Those characterizations will resonate with the legal left. But they also reveal the core tension in this debate, a tension the courts have not fully resolved.
The INA does give migrants a statutory right to apply for asylum. That much is clear in the text, and the D.C. Circuit's reading of the law is not unreasonable on its face. But the statute was written for a different era, one in which asylum claims numbered in the thousands, not the hundreds of thousands.
What the courts have not grappled with is the practical reality the administration keeps pointing to: when asylum becomes the default claim for virtually every person who crosses the border illegally, the system ceases to function as a legal safeguard and becomes, as DHS put it, "a de facto amnesty program." The backlog grows. The wait times stretch into years. And the people who entered illegally remain in the country the entire time.
The administration's argument is not that asylum should be abolished. It is that the president has the authority to manage the border in ways that prevent the system from being overwhelmed. The courts, so far, have said no, at least not through executive order alone.
That distinction matters. If the president cannot act unilaterally, the responsibility falls to Congress. And Congress has shown no ability or willingness to fix the asylum system in any meaningful way. The result is a legal stalemate that leaves border communities, federal agents, and lawful immigrants caught in the middle.
White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller, appearing on Fox News's "The Ingraham Angle," called the appeals court ruling an "abomination," reflecting the depth of the administration's opposition to the decision.
The administration has won other recent appeals court battles on policy fronts where the legal ground was more favorable. But on asylum, the statutory text gives the courts a strong foothold, and the D.C. Circuit used it.
The ruling does not take immediate effect, and the administration will almost certainly seek a stay while it pursues further review. The Washington Examiner reported that the case could go to the full D.C. Circuit sitting en banc or directly to the Supreme Court, a path that would put the question of presidential authority over asylum squarely before the justices.
That prospect is what makes this ruling more than a single legal setback. It is a vehicle. If the Supreme Court takes the case, it will have to decide whether the INA's asylum provisions are truly absolute, or whether the president retains some emergency authority to restrict access when the system is being exploited at scale.
The 2-1 split on the panel suggests the question is not as settled as the majority opinion implies. And the administration's defiant tone, "this will not be the last word", makes clear that the fight will continue.
Courts across the country have been active in shaping the boundaries of executive authority, from construction disputes at the White House to sentencing reversals in state courts. But few cases carry the same weight as a ruling that determines whether a president can control who enters the country and on what terms.
The asylum system is broken. Everyone knows it. The question is whether the courts will let anyone fix it, or whether they'll keep insisting that a statute written for a different world must be applied without adaptation, no matter the cost to the communities that bear the consequences.
