WASHINGTON: The Trump administration can stop approving new refugees for entry into the US but has to allow in people who were conditionally accepted before the president suspended the nation’s refugee admissions system, an appeals court ruled Tuesday.
The order narrowed a ruling from a federal judge in Seattle who found the program should be restarted.
The three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals said the president has the power to restrict people from entering the country, pointing to a 2018 Supreme Court ruling upholding President Donald Trump’s ban on travel from several mostly Muslim countries during his first term.
Refugees who were conditionally approved by the government before Trump’s order halting the refugee program should still be allowed to resettle, the judges found.
The panel ruled on an emergency appeal of a ruling from US District Judge Jamal Whitehead who found that the president’s authority to suspend refugee admissions is not limitless and that Trump cannot nullify the law passed by Congress establishing the program.
Whitehead pointed to reports of refugees stranded in dangerous places, families separated from relatives in the US and people sold all their possessions for travel to the US that was later canceled.
Melissa Keaney, an attorney with the International Refugee Assistance Project, applauded the portions of the order that the appeals court left intact.
“We welcome this continued relief for tens of thousands of refugees who will now have the opportunity to restart their lives in the United States,” she said.
Whitehead, who was nominated by Democratic President Joe Biden, also issued a second order Tuesday blocking the cancelation of refugee resettlement contracts.
Trump’s order said the refugee program — a form of legal migration to the US for people displaced by war, natural disaster or persecution — 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.” There are 600,000 people being processed to come to the US as refugees around the world, according to the administration.
The Justice Department argued that the order was well within Trump’s authority.
Despite long-standing support from both major political parties for accepting thoroughly vetted refugees, the program has become politicized in recent years. Trump also temporarily halted it during his first term, and then dramatically decreased the number of refugees who could enter the US each year.
The plaintiffs said the president had not shown how the entry of these refugees would be detrimental to the US
They include 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 their ability to provide critical services to refugees, including those already in the US, has been severely inhibited by Trump’s order.
Appeals court allows Trump administration to suspend approval of new refugees amid lawsuit
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Appeals court allows Trump administration to suspend approval of new refugees amid lawsuit
- Despite long-standing support from both major political parties for accepting thoroughly vetted refugees, the program has become politicized in recent years
Ethiopia’s prime minister accuses Eritrea of mass killings during Tigray war
- Landlocked Ethiopia says that Eritrea is arming rebel groups, while Eritrea says Ethiopia’s aspiration is to gain access to a seaport
- Ethiopia lost sovereign access to the Red Sea when Eritrea seceded in 1993 after decades of guerrilla warfare
ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopia’s government Tuesday for the first time acknowledged the involvement of troops from neighboring Eritrea in the war in the Tigray region that ended in 2022, accusing them of mass killings, amid reports of renewed fighting in the region.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, while addressing parliament Tuesday, accused Eritrean troops fighting alongside Ethiopian forces of mass killings in the war, during which more than 400,000 people are estimated to have died.
Eritrean and Ethiopian troops fought against regional forces in the northern Tigray region in a war that ended in 2022 with the signing of a peace agreement.
Eritrea’s Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel told The Associated Press that Ahmed’s comments were “cheap and despicable lies” and did not merit a response.
Both nations have been accusing each other of provoking a potential civil war, with landlocked Ethiopia saying that Eritrea is arming and funding rebel groups, while Eritrea says Ethiopia’s aspiration is to gain access to a seaport.
“The rift did not begin with the Red Sea issue, as many people think,” Ahmed told parliamentarians. “It started in the first round of the war in Tigray, when the Eritrean army followed us into Shire and began demolishing houses, massacred our youth in Axum, looted factories in Adwa, and uprooted our factories.”
“The Red Sea and Ethiopia cannot remain separated forever,” he added.
Ethiopia lost sovereign access to the Red Sea when Eritrea seceded in 1993 after decades of guerrilla warfare.
Gebremeskel said the prime minister has only recently changed his tune in his push for access to the Red Sea.
Ahmed “and his top military brass were profusely showering praises and State Medals on the Eritrea army and its senior officers. … But when he later developed the delusional malaise of ‘sovereignty access to the sea’ and an agenda of war against Eritrea, he began to sing to a different chorus,” he said.
Eritrea and Ethiopia initially made peace after Abiy came to power in 2018, with Abiy winning a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts toward reconciliation.
In June, Eritrea accused Ethiopia of having a “long-brewing war agenda” aimed at seizing its Red Sea ports. Ethiopia recently said that Eritrea was “actively preparing to wage war against it.”
Analysts say an alliance between Eritrea and regional forces in the troubled Tigray region may be forming, as fighting has been reported in recent weeks. Flights by the national carrier to the region were canceled last week over the renewed clashes.
