A federal judge Wednesday grilled Biden administration officials about temporary asylum restrictions on the southern border and said he would decide within a week whether the rules are against the law.
U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar in the Northern District of California, who blocked similar restrictions under the previous administration, said during a hearing that if he ruled against the Biden administration, he would hold off on enforcing his decision for two weeks so that the government could appeal.
The Biden administration had requested the extra time because a ruling against the asylum restrictions could wipe out vital elements of the administration’s strategy to reduce record numbers of illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border as the president runs for a second term. Officials said in court records that tossing the restrictions could have a “chaotic impact” on the border.
The Biden administration imposed the rules in mid-May after it ended the Title 42 pandemic policy that had allowed border authorities to quickly expel migrants without considering their asylum claims. The administration warned that an even larger influx of migrants could rush the border and overwhelm the Border Patrol without tighter restrictions in place.
The restrictions are supposed to last two years and declare migrants ineligible for asylum if they entered the United States illegally or failed to seek humanitarian protection in another country such as Mexico along the route.
Federal asylum law says that to qualify for asylum, a foreigner must have a well-founded fear that they will face persecution in their homeland because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or another trait that makes them a particular target.
Federal officials have said that there is a significant gulf between the number of migrants who pass an initial asylum screening and the number who ultimately win their cases in immigration courts. Those who lose are rarely deported in part because of large case backlogs and limited federal resources, officials said.
Advocacy groups argued that the Biden restrictions violate federal law, which says that anyone on U.S. soil may seek as
