(CN) — The executive branch does not have “boundless” discretion to suspend refugee admissions, a federal judge in Washington said Friday, explaining his preliminary injunction of an executive order that halted refugee admissions and cut funding to organizations that provide resettlement services.
“In sum, though the Executive enjoys considerable latitude to suspend refugee admissions, that discretion is not boundless,” U.S. District Judge Jamal N. Whitehead wrote Friday . “Where, as here, presidential action effectively nullifies a congressionally established program, causing irreparable harm to vulnerable individuals and organizations, judicial intervention becomes necessary to preserve the separation of powers our Constitution demands.”
President Donald Trump signed the order — titled “Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program” — shortly after taking office in January.
“The order halts, without a defined end date, the carefully constructed framework Congress established through the Refugee Act of 1980,” Whitehead said.
In a bench ruling that elicited a gasp and clap from a packed courtroom on Feb. 25, Whitehead sided with plaintiff refugees and aid organizations, granting them a preliminary injunction.
Nine individual refugees — identified in the suit only by their first names — and the Church World Service, Lutheran Community Services Northwest, and HIAS, a trio of faith-based refugee services, argued that Trump exceeded his authority and that any changes to the nation’s refugee resettlement program should have been subject to notice and comment rulemaking required under the Administrative Procedure Act.
The plaintiffs said that any relief short of an injunction would continue to irreparably harm the aid organizations and all the refugees caught in the order’s crosshairs.
The government argued the plaintiffs lacked standing to seek such relief, because the president “may not be enjoined in the performance of his official non-ministerial duties.”
Whitehead said Friday that even if the court lacks jurisdiction to directly enjoin the president, it can still block executive officials from carrying out presidential directives.
The Joe Biden appointee also said that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their claims that the order exceeds statutory and constitutional limitations on the president’s power.
Citing Trump v. Hawaii, Whitehead noted that the Supreme Court’s reasoning in that case established the principle that the president’s invocation of the statute that authorizes he or she to suspend the entry of immigrants becomes “unlawful and ultra vires when it overrides or conflicts” with provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
“Thus, the President may not employ Section 1182(f) to effect a wholesale reversal of legislatively established policy, nor may he use the provision to nullify an entire statutory framework through executive decree. The Constitution’s separation of powers demands this limitation,” Whitehead wrote.
He said that because the executive order lacks a fixed end date, it does not just suspend entry as permitted by statute but instead indefinitely displaces the refugee program.
Whitehead also rejected the government’s argument that the order falls within the president’s power to manage foreign affairs, because its focus is domestic, as it is concerned with taxpayer resources, economic impacts on U.S. communities, and the “appropriate assimilation” of refugees.
The suspension of funding for refugee resettlement agencies has left hundreds of staff members furloughed or laid-off, while the immediate implementation of the executive order by the State Department and federal agencies left thousands of people attempting to resettle as refugees stranded, Whitehead said. Thus, the plaintiffs showed they would be irreparably harmed absent an injunction.
“The Government’s arguments to the contrary are, to put it charitably, unconvincing, as the Government tries to wave away concrete evidence of devastating harm to both individual and organizational plaintiffs, offering instead the tepid suggestion that these injuries amount to mere economic inconvenience,” Whitehead wrote.
“But the record shows otherwise: refugees stranded in dangerous conditions abroad, families who sold everything they owned before having travel canceled, and organizations facing the wholesale destruction of decades-worth of refugee resettlement infrastructure are not theoretical injuries that can be remedied by a check from the Treasury,” he added.
The nationwide injunction prevents the defendants, except for Trump as an individual, from enforcing the executive order, suspending refugee processing, and suspending funds.
On Thursday, the plaintiffs requested an emergency conference, saying the government was trying to circumvent Whitehead’s ruling. On Wednesday, the agencies had received termination notices from the State Department, which notified them that it was ending agreements that fund the activities of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. A status conference regarding the motion is set for Monday.