A federal court has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s new policy that forced asylum seekers to return to Mexico and remain there while their cases are considered. The American Civil Liberties Union, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Center for Gender & Refugee Studies successfully sought the preliminary injunction against what the administration calls, in an Orwellian twist, the “Migrant Protection Protocols."
The ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, and CGRS were in federal court today seeking a preliminary injunction to halt the Trump administration’s new policy forcing asylum seekers to return to Mexico and remain there while their cases are considered. “This ill-conceived policy is the Trump administration’s latest attempt to slam the door on people fleeing horrific violence and persecution," CGRS Co-Legal Director Blaine Bookey said. "Forcibly returning asylum seekers to danger in Mexico is as illegal as it is cruel."
This week CGRS and Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila filed suit against the U.S. Department of Justice, challenging the agency’s failure to release information about former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ involvement in the asylum case known as Matter of A-B-. The lawsuit, brought under the Freedom of Information Act, was filed on behalf of Ms. A.B., a Salvadoran domestic violence survivor who sought asylum protection in the United States. Her life was upended when Sessions personally intervened in her case in 2018.
