( Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Friday momentarily postponed a decision to obstruct one of President Donald Trump’s signature immigration policies that controlled a surge of migrants on the southern border, forcing 10s of thousands to wait in Mexico.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a Trump administration request to pause its judgment from earlier on Friday, to enable the government to ask the Supreme Court to take up the problem.
If it took effect, the ruling would be a blow for Trump, who has actually stated the policy a success in lowering the flow of numerous thousands of individuals from Central America into the United States as he projects for a second term in office.
The panel discovered the plaintiffs were likely to prosper in their argument that the program, called the Migrant Defense Protocols (MPP), broke U.S. migration law and global obligations on the treatment of asylum seekers.
About 60,000 people have been returned to Mexico to await the outcome of their cases in frequently dangerous border towns where they are susceptible to kidnapping, rape, burglary and other criminal offenses while residing in often unhygienic conditions.
Responding to the ruling, the Trump administration stated at least 25,000 migrants returned through the program stayed in Mexico and that halting it “could trigger a rush on the southern border” by migrants trying to go into the United States.
The administration advised the appeals court to pause its decision or threat “immediate turmoil on the border” that might cause “irreversible harm to the federal government, migrants, and the United States public.”
Migration lawyers hurried to ports of entry on the border after Friday’s ruling to guarantee Customs and Border Prot