The Biden administration is neck-deep in judicial battles. But one case stands out among the rest.
And three federal judges nearly gave President Joe Biden a heart attack with this jaw-dropping ruling.
A federal appeals court has temporarily halted a ruling from a lower court to stop a policy of the Biden administration barring asylum-seekers at the southern border.
The 9th Circuit panel decided in a 2-1 vote that the federal court injunction blocking the policy next week should be put on hold. This is considered as a victory for the Biden administration, who have been touting the recent drop in border crossings.
BREAKING: A 9th Circuit panel has PAUSED a federal court order blocking the Biden administration's asylum restrictions at the southern border.
The federal court order was set to stop the policy next week.
The 9th Circuit panel stayed the ruling through appeal. pic.twitter.com/J5MXytVguh
— Hamed Aleaziz (@Haleaziz) August 3, 2023
Trump appointee Judge Lawrence VanDyke wrote a scathing dissenting opinion, saying that the asylum policy of the Biden administration was not “meaningfully different” from the policies of the Trump administration that his colleagues on the panel voted to overturn.
He went so far as to imply they disregarded their own precedent and appear to doubt their motives, saying he had “the impression that something other than the law is at work here,” as reported by Politico.
Former President Bill Clinton selected the Judges William Fletcher and Richard Paez in the majority opinion.
The border policy proposed by the Biden administration this spring restricted the ability of noncitizens to seek asylum if they passed between ports of entry illegally or did not seek protection in another nation through which they had traveled.
U.S. District Court Judge Jon Tigar ruled against the policy on July 25 and put the regulation on hold for 14 days so that the Biden administration could file an appeal.
With the rule put in place by the Biden administration, DHS may prevent individuals from entering the country without subjecting them to lengthy court hearings and risking their release.
Some people thought the rule was unfair, therefore the ACLU and other immigrant rights organizations filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration because of the regulation.
This is a weird case where the Biden administration’s new policy actually resembles the Trump administration’s policy, as Judge Lawrence VanDyke points out.
And yet, VanDyke dissented here with the two “liberal” Judges that were appointed by Bill Clinton.
This case could easily make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court as the High Court may view this as an issue in which clarity and finality is needed with the judges in lower courts seemingly completely torn.
The judicial outlook on immigration for the new Justices like Kavanaugh and Barrett is fairly untested at this moment, so neither side could be comfortable that they’d win should this case reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
Though, the six conservative Justices on the bench do tend to be more strict constitutionalists, which may lend itself to the executive branch being fully within its right to restrict asylum-seeking immigration as they see fit.
There’s a ton of legal precedence for that as well, as before the 1940s immigration as heavily influenced and restricted by the executive branch.
Oddly, this is a case where a majority of Americans are behind Joe Biden, even Trump voters, because it would mean a tightening on the immigration issue at the southern border.
Stay tuned to the DC Daily Journal.
