WASHINGTON, D.C. – Only refugees who were closest to arriving in the United States are covered by an order the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued last month partially blocking the Trump administration from suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, the court clarified in a filing Monday.
A three-judge panel wrote that its earlier order only pertains to people whom immigration officials had conditionally approved as refugees before Jan. 20 and had arranged travel to the United States.
The March order from the Ninth Circuit panel upheld part of a Washington state federal judge’s order blocking President Donald Trump’s day-one executive order suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.
The Trump administration sought clarification on the appeals court’s March order. The higher court had denied part of the administration’s request to halt the lower court’s earlier preliminary injunction.
On Monday, the appeals court panel said the government and the refugee advocacy groups challenging Trump’s executive order had overstated what the panel’s March order required.
Rather than admit all of the roughly 130,000 conditionally approved refugees, as the government claimed, or “tens of thousands” of refugees the groups said the order applied to, the court only required the government to allow those who “needed only to complete their arranged travel to the United States.”
“Under these definitions, the parties have construed our carveout broadly enough to swallow the entire stay order,” the judges wrote Monday.
The judges used the example of a refugee family in Kenya that was forced to shelter in the parking lot of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi after their travel was abruptly canceled as the type of people who would still be allowed to settle in the United States under the March order.
Inauguration Day order
Consistent with the Jan. 20 executive order, the administration withheld funds appropriated by Congress for those services — drawing swift legal action.
The International Refugee Assistance Project filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Church World Service, Lutheran Community Services Northwest and several refugees and others impacted by the order in February.
In its March order, the appeals court denied the administration’s motion “to the extent the district court’s preliminary injunction order applies to individuals who were conditionally approved for refugee status by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services before January 20, 2025.”
“The preliminary injunction remains in effect for these individuals only, and the government must resume their processing, facilitation of travel to the United States, admission, and provision of resettlement benefits after admission,” the judges wrote Monday.
The panel noted that when it issued the order in March, it “did not define conditional approval.”
Melissa Keaney, senior supervising attorney in the litigation department at the International Refugee Assistance Project, said “the Ninth Circuit reiterated that the U.S. government must end the state of limbo for refugees like our client Pacito who were ready to travel and had their lives turned upside down by President Trump’s suspension of the refugee program,’’ in a statement shared with States Newsroom.
“We will hold the government accountable to actually process those refugees immediately, and we will continue to defend the refugee program as a whole in court,” Keaney said.
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