US judge blocks Trump’s suspension of refugee resettlement program

A federal judge has blocked Donald Trump’s attempt to suspend the US’s refugee admission system after ruling that the move exceeded his powers.

The ruling, from US district judge Jamal Whitehead, stated that Trump’s executive order affecting refugee admissions, issued on the day of his inauguration, amounted to an illegal usurpation of the powers of Congress.

“The president has substantial discretion … to suspend refugee admissions. But that authority is not limitless,” Whitehead told a court in Seattle in delivering his verdict.

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by major refugee assistance groups, who argued that Trump’s order breached the system created by acts of Congress to absorb refugees into the US, while impeding their ability to help refugees already in the US.

Whitehead agreed that it represented an “effective nullification of congressional will”.

The ruling is a significant setback for Trump’s agenda on immigration – on which he has moved to end protected status for around half-a-million Haitians in the US legally, as well as deport undocumented migrants.

August Flentje, a lawyer for the justice department, told the judge that the administration was likely to consider filing an emergency appeal.

Trump’s executive order said the refugee program – a form of legal migration to the US – would be suspended because cities and communities had been taxed by “record levels of migration” and didn’t have the ability to “absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees”.

The federal refugee system has been in place for decades and helps people who have escaped war, natural disaster or persecution. Despite long-standing support from both parties for accepting thoroughly vetted refugees, the program has become politicized in recent years.

Trump temporarily halted it during his first presidency, and then dramatically lowered the number of refugees who could enter the US each year.

The groups challenging his latest order included the International Refugee Assistance Project on behalf of Church World Service, the Jewish refugee resettlement agency HIAS, Lutheran Community Services Northwest, and individual refugees and family members. They said it had several restricted their ability to provide critical services to refugees, including those already in the US.

Some refugees whose entry had previously been approved had their travel cancelled on short notice, and families who have waited years to reunite have had to remain apart, the lawsuit said.

Last week a federal judge in Washington DC refused to immediately block the Trump administration’s actions in a similar lawsuit brought by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. That case faces another hearing on Friday.