(CN) – A federal judge didn’t cut any slack for the Justice Department, which filed a stay Tuesday on a Nov. 19 order to lift the ban on the Trump administration’s asylum policy pending an appeal to the Ninth Circuit.
In a late afternoon ruling, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar questioned why the government waited eight days to file the motion, which asked the judge to decide on the issue in one day without allowing the plaintiffs, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, a chance to respond.
“The Court cannot reasonably conclude that the issues presented require resolution within one day and without an opportunity for the opposing parties to be heard,” Tigar wrote in Tuesday’s ruling.
Tigar issued a nationwide injunction barring the government from refusing immigrants asylum if they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.
Under federal law, immigrants are allowed to request asylum even if they entered the U.S. illegally, according to Tigar’s previous ruling.
“Whatever the scope of the President’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” Tigar wrote in the Nov. 19 order.
In his Nov. 9 proclamation, President Donald Trump said that emergency authority powers gave him the right to adopt the new policy.
Tigar disagreed.
“And if what Defendants intend to say is that the President by proclamation can override Congress’s clearly expressed legislative intent, simply because a statute conflicts with the President’s policy goals, the Court rejects that argument,” Tigar wrote.
The judge did not, however, completely deny the government’s motion. Tigar has given the plaintiffs two days to file their opposition and will rule on the matter by Friday.
After Tigar issued his Nov. 19 injunction, President Trump criticized the courts and called the Ninth Circuit a “disgrace” and said the court had “Obama judges.”
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts pushed back on Trump’s comments in a rare rebuke of the president.
“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said in a written statement. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them."
Tigar was nominated by former President Barack Obama in 2012 to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
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