A Trump administration immigration policy that requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases wind through U.S. courts was blocked and then reinstated by a court in the matter of hours, creating chaos at border crossings, courtrooms and legal offices. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put the policy on hold midday Friday, delivering a setback to a policy that has become one of President Donald Trump’s signature efforts to restrict immigration. But by the end of the day, the court allowed the program to go back into effect after the Justice Department argued that its suspension will prompt migrants to overrun the border and endanger national security. The White House argued that the suspension of the policy would overwhelm the nation’s immigration system, damage relations with the government of Mexico and increase the risk of outbreak from the new coronavirus. Customs and Border Protection closed one border crossing leading into El Paso after the initial decision. Government attorneys said immigration lawyers had begun demanding that asylum seekers be allowed in the United States, with one insisting that 1,000 people be allowed to enter at one location. The program was instituted last year and has sent about 60,000 asylum seekers back to Mexico. Immigration lawyers and advocates say the program is a humanitarian disaster, subjecting migrants to violence, kidnapping and extortion in dangerous Mexican border cities. Hundreds more have been living in squalid encampments just across the border. The immediate response by immigrants and their lawyers to the initial decision Friday reflects the growing frustration on the part of asylum seekers who have been waiting for months in areas of Mexico that even the U.S. State Department urges people not to visit because of crime and kidnapping. Representatives from the group Human Rights First hand-delivered a copy of the decision Friday to CBP officers at a bridge connecting Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Lawyers were hoping to get their clients before U.S. immigration court judges. Blocking the program has become a top priority for immigrant advocates. Maya Ivars, an attorney for Al Otro Lado, a LA-based legal advocacy group, said volunteer lawyers from around the country booked flights to San Diego after the policy was blocked. A Venezuelan mother showed up at a border crossing in Tijuana with her 1-year-old son Friday after an attorney assisting her on her asylum bid texted her about the policy being halted. She came immediately to the border to ask border inspectors that she be allowed in the U.S., arriving with about a dozen families — about 30 people total — around the same time the court suspended its own order. A government official told an attorney for the group to wait at the turnstile gates to the U.S. Liliana González, 32, got a phone call from an attorney Friday that the policy was halted and that she should pack her belongings. Her husband and three children, ages 13, 6 and 4, packed their bags and a suitcase and checked out of their migrant shelter. Friday’s developments caused whiplash. “It’s somewhat confusing,” Gonzalez said. “You believe, you don’t believe. Let’s see what God says. Let’s see what the law says.” The family fled gang threats in El Salvador and has been living in Tijuana for a […]

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