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WASHINGTON (CN) — A coalition of immigrant advocacy groups sued the Trump administration on Monday, seeking to block a series of executive actions that would wipe away legal protections for asylum-seekers, including unaccompanied children, and open them up to deportation.
The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, and Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project brought the suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
They argue that several provisions in President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order — titled “Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion” — would upend the careful balance Congress has struck between making sure non-asylum-seekers are quickly removed and ensuring asylum-seekers fleeing danger in their home countries are not.
“Under the proclamation, the government is doing just what Congress by statute decreed that the United States must not do,” the advocates said in the suit. “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. Indeed, the proclamation does not even exempt unaccompanied children, despite the specific protections such children receive by statute.”
According to the advocates, Trump’s order undermines protections created in the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act.
The advocates said that while Trump invokes a certain provision of the law that allows the president to suspend the entry of certain migrants whose entry is deemed “detrimental to the interests of the United States,” the authority does not empower the blanket expulsion of asylum-seekers within the country.
That has been the understanding of the executive branch for the last 40 years, the advocates argue, pointing back to a 1984 opinion from then-Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Legal Counsel Theodore Olson under Ronald Reagan, as well as a 2018 regulation promulgated by the Justice and Homeland Security Departments under Trump.
Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, said in a statement that Trump’s executive order was “extreme, unjust and a disservice” to asylum-seekers and their families.
“Denying migrants and displaced individuals from the opportunity to find safety undermines our nation’s values and creates additional strain on our already burdened border communities,” Garza said. “The U.S. should lead by example in implementing fair immigration practices and treating the most vulnerable with dignity.”
In his order, Trump declared an invasion at the southern border and argued that the move granted him the emergency power to deny the physical entry of all migrants and bar their access to portions of the immigration system until he deems the invasion over.
The advocates argue that Trump’s declaration presents an “extreme example of presidential overreach” and goes far beyond even the outer limits of the president’s constitutional authority.
“If the proclamation may lawfully abrogate the statutory protections at issue here, then every future president may sweep away at whim the protections that Congress provided in the INA,” the advocates said. “Our separation of powers rebels at that idea.”
The Department of Homeland Security declined to respond to a request for comment.
Monday’s suit comes as Trump’s executive actions face an ever-increasing amount of litigation challenging their constitutionality and legality.
In Washington on Thursday, the OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates filed a suit seeking an injunction against Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship. The advocacy group warned that the move would violate the rights of its clients, pregnant women whose children would be born in the U.S. after the order would take effect.
A federal judge in Washington temporarily blocked the order in a similar lawsuit brought by 22 Democratic state attorneys general, although Trump has vowed to appeal the ruling.
In another lawsuit filed in Washington on Friday, a coalition of immigrant advocacy groups around the country challenged Trump’s effort to terminate funding for several legal aid programs aimed at promoting court efficiency and providing constitutional due process to immigrants.
The programs include the Legal Orientation Program, the Immigration Court Helpdesk, the Family Group Legal Orientation Program, and the Counsel for Children Initiative.
A Jan. 22 suit — brought by the American Civil Liberties Union — challenged a DHS policy that would expand “fast-track deportations” and deny immigrants their due process rights by empowering the government to deport undocumented immigrants who cannot prove they’ve been in the country for two years or longer.
Scott Michelman, legal director at the ACLU of the District of Columbia, decried Trump’s multi-prong attacks on immigrant rights in Monday’s statement.
“The United States has long served as a refuge for people fleeing persecution abroad, as we declare proudly on the Statue of Liberty,” Michelman said. “Trump’s attempted border shutdown is an affront to our history and our values, and it will impose incalculable suffering on refugees fleeing for their lives.”
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