A district court judge, appointed by former President Joe Biden, is requiring President Donald Trump to bring roughly 12,000 refugees to the United States in a new court order issued this week.
Judge Jamal Whitehead, appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in 2023 by Biden, says Trump must admit thousands of refugees who had been approved for resettlement in the U.S. before he signed an executive order to halt the refugee resettlement program.
“This Court will not entertain the Government’s result-oriented rewriting of a judicial order that clearly says what it says,” Whitehead writes:
The Government is free, of course, to seek further clarification from the Ninth Circuit. But the Government is not free to disobey statutory and constitutional law—and the direct orders of this Court and the Ninth Circuit—while it seeks such clarification. The Government’s obligation to process, admit, and provide statutorily mandated resettlement support services to the Injunction-Protected Refugees is immediate. Likewise, the Government’s obligation to restore funding, information, and operational support to its USRAP partners as necessary to process, admit, and provide resettlement services to these individuals is also immediate. [Emphasis added]
After taking office, Trump signed the executive order to suspend the refugee resettlement program. As expected, those contractors whose funding relies on resettling refugees in American communities sued the Trump administration to restore the program.
In February, Whitehead blocked Trump from carrying out the executive order to suspend the refugee program, even as he admitted the president holds broad authority over immigration.
“The president has substantial discretion to suspend refugee admissions. But that authority is not limitless,” Whitehead wrote.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
