The Daily Fuckup

A federal appeals court on April 24, 2026, blocked enforcement of the Trump administration’s asylum restriction in RAICES v. Mullin, saying the government had gone beyond the powers Congress gave it in immigration law. The D.C. Circuit affirmed a district court ruling that the proclamation and later guidance could not be used to cut off asylum access or create a separate removal track for people already in the country.

The court said the Immigration and Nationality Act gives the executive branch authority to suspend entry in some circumstances, but not to rewrite the statute’s removal system once people are here. In the panel’s view, the administration’s approach unlawfully bypassed the procedures and protections Congress put in place for asylum and withholding claims. The ruling leaves the administration free to keep defending the policy, but not to enforce it while the case continues.

The challenge was brought by refugee and immigrant advocacy groups and individual plaintiffs after President Donald Trump issued Proclamation 10888 on Inauguration Day, declaring the southern border situation an invasion and using that finding to justify tighter entry restrictions. The court said the proclamation and the implementing guidance went too far when they were used to impose new summary-removal procedures on people who had already crossed into the United States. The opinion also noted that the case was about whether entry-suspension authority can be stretched into a power to bypass the INA’s removal rules, not about whether the proclamation itself could label the border situation the way it did.

The decision is another setback for a White House trying to pair aggressive border politics with a legal theory that treats emergency-style language as a source of expanded immigration power. The D.C. Circuit’s answer was narrower and more traditional: if Congress wanted the executive to be able to suspend asylum eligibility or create a new removal process, it would have said so more clearly. Instead, the court said, the statute already contains the rules the government must follow.

For now, that leaves the administration with the usual options after a loss like this: appeal again, revise the policy, or look for another way to tighten asylum access without running into the same statutory wall. But the opinion makes the same point in a more formal register than the politics around it. Border hardening is not the same thing as legal authority, and on this record the court said the line has been crossed.