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UC Law's Refugee Center Joins Lawsuit Against Trump’s Asylum Suspension Order

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Immigrant advocates are closely watching California sheriffs to see how they'll uphold the state's sanctuary law in a new Trump administration. Here, people seeking asylum are detained by border patrol after crossing the U.S. and Mexico border near Campo on June 3, 2024. President Trump’s executive order suspending entry to asylum seekers was met with an immediate challenge on Monday.  (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

The Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at UC Law San Francisco and other legal service providers are challenging an executive order by President Donald Trump that suspends entry to the United States for asylum seekers, claiming that it violates immigration protections put in place by Congress.

The center joined a federal lawsuit Monday opposing Trump’s proclamation that there was an “invasion” at the U.S.-Mexico border. The suit claims that the order is in violation of federal law, which requires the U.S. to allow people to enter the country to apply for asylum and prohibits the government from returning people to a country where they face the threat of persecution or torture.

“Under the Proclamation, the government is doing just what Congress by statute decreed that the United States must not do. It is returning asylum seekers — not just single adults, but families too — to countries where they face persecution or torture, without allowing them to invoke the protections Congress has provided,” the suit reads.

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Trump’s order relies on Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which says that the president can “suspend the entry” of non-citizens when their entry “would be detrimental to the interest of the United States.”

The order classifies immigration at the southern border as an “invasion” and says that under Article IV of the Constitution, the president has the responsibility to protect the country. Trump has ordered the Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary of State and Attorney General to block asylum seekers from entering the country.

The lawsuit argues that Trump has not given a definition of an invasion and that immigration at any scale would not be considered one.

President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office on January 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Anna Monkeymaker/Getty)

“The invasion provision of the Constitution has in the past been used in wartime,” said Melissa Crow, the director of litigation for the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies. “We are alleging that [Trump] is abusing his authority, both because there’s not an invasion and because there are numerous separate provisions of the immigration law that give people who are either physically present in the United States or who arrive in the United States the right to apply for asylum.”

Other sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act prevent the U.S. from removing people who have reached ports of entry or entered the country without inspection. The law says that anyone who does arrive is entitled to apply for asylum and prohibits the country from removing non-citizens to a country where their life or freedom would be threatened or returning them to a country where the U.S. believes they would be in danger of being tortured.

“As far as we can tell, under the terms of the proclamation, these people will be expelled from the United States without any process,” Crow said. “Immigration laws provide a very specific process that people have to go through before they can be removed or deported from the United States. That is not happening here.”

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, asylum seekers who arrive without valid documents, like a visa, are entitled to an interview with an asylum officer to determine if they have a “credible fear” of returning to the country from which they fled. If fear is established, they are eligible for a full hearing. Immigration judges decide whether to grant asylum.

Trump’s order calls for the suspension of that process entirely, including for unaccompanied children who previously had additional protections.

In 2016, the U.S. began putting constraints on the flow of asylum seekers through metering. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials began “turnbacks” when people “were simply told that there wasn’t capacity to process them,” Crow told KQED.

She said the issue isn’t so much that too many people are arriving at the border but that the immigration system hasn’t been bolstered to process people in a reasonable amount of time.

The Center for Gender and Refugee Studies and other legal providers have been litigating the metering policy for years, alleging that it violates federal and international law. Now, they are also fighting the new order.

“People are going to keep coming because they are fleeing for their lives,” she said. “The fact that they’re going to be turned back is something they’re only going to realize when they get here.”

Feb. 5: This story’s headline was updated to distinguish the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies from the full UC Law San Francisco college.

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