The Supreme Court prevents Trump denying the right of asylum to irregular immigrants

[KEPY™]

A new attack on immigration, a new judicial defeat. The Supreme Court of the United States stopped Friday the attempt of president Donald Trump to deny the right of asylum to all immigrants who cross the border irregularly. With this measure, Trump sought to discourage crossing outside the ports of entry and immigration in general, completely closing the door to asylum in the country. The decision of the Supreme Court showed a very divided court in which the president, the conservative magistrate John Roberts, was aligned against the White House.
The measure was announced by Trump through a presidential proclamation that basically changed the asylum laws of the United States with a simple signature from the president. For the White House, no one who enters the country by a point other than an official border post has the right to seek asylum in the country. Each year, tens of thousands of people cross the southern border irregularly, surrender to border police and seek asylum in the United States. Anyone who is in the territory of the United States can ask for political asylum if he fears for his life in his country of origin, no matter how he arrived.

A judge in San Francisco, Jon Tigar, accepted a complaint from the United States Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and provisionally suspended the application of the measure nationwide on November 19, on the grounds that the president's order clashed with the federal law. The court of appeals that has jurisdiction over the West, also based in San Francisco, gave the reason to the judge. Judge Jay Bybee, appointed by President George W. Bush, wrote: "Just as we can not legislate from the bench, as we are often reminded, neither can the executive legislate from the Oval Office."

That decision was appealed by the Trump Government to the Supreme Court, and that appeal is the one that was rejected this Friday, in a new judicial defeat of the president's anti-immigrant initiatives.

The rejection of the Supreme Court also leaves some hints of the dynamics within a tribunal in which Donald Trump has already appointed two magistrates and who considers himself irremediably heeled to the right by the ideological profile of its members. In the decision by 5 votes to 4, the key vote was that of the president of the Supreme Court, the conservative magistrate John Roberts, who aligned himself with the bloc of magistrates appointed by Democratic presidents and therefore considered progressive.

The Court did not publish a substantive argument of its decision. The other four conservative magistrates, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh (these last two appointed by Trump), signed a vote of disagreement.

When the San Francisco Court of Appeals, called the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, rejected Trump's appeal, the president became enraged and launched an unprecedented attack on that court. Without naming him, he called Judge Tigar "an Obama judge" and complained that his government systematically loses all cases in that court. The Ninth Circuit is a jurisdiction that includes California and Hawaii, whose attorneys-general routinely denounce any Trump initiative in immigration.

Trump's comments provoked an unprecedented reaction from the president of the Supreme Court. Justice Roberts wrote a public letter in which he said that "there are no judges of Obama, nor judges of Trump, nor judges of Bush or Clinton." "Judicial independence is something we should all be grateful for," Roberts said in a public nod to the president. Trump reaffirmed his criticisms in a tweet. This Friday, Roberts issued the key vote in the last chapter of that same case.