Judge appointed by Trump strikes down his 3rd-country asylum immigration rule

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly in Washington, D.C., struck down President Trump's third-country asylum rule late Tuesday, handing another blow to Trump's hardline immigration policies. The rule, enacted in 2019, effectively prevents mostly Central American migrants from applying for asylum in the U.S. unless they have first sought asylum in Mexico. Kelly, appointed by Trump in 2017, said the Trump administration failed to comply with the federal Administrative Procedure Act in its attempt to wrongfully sidestep the Immigration and Nationality Act.

The Immigration and Nationality Act, with few exceptions, allows migrants to apply for asylum when they arrive on U.S. soil, Kelly said. "There are many circumstances in which courts appropriately defer to the national security judgments of the executive," he wrote in his ruling. "But determining the scope of an APA exception is not one of them."

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