Appeals court allows Trump administration to suspend approval of new refugees

An appeals court has allowed the Trump administration to suspend entry of new refugees as a lawsuit plays out over the president’s executive order halting the nation’s refugee admissions system.

Refugees conditionally approved before President Donald Trump took office must still be processed under the order from the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, but it allows the Republican administration to suspend new approvals.

The appeals court panel halted a ruling from US District Judge Jamal Whitehead.

He found that Mr Trump could not nullify the law passed by Congress establishing the programme.

Judge Whitehead, who was appointed by Joe Biden, a Democrat, said the president does have substantial discretion to suspend refugee admissions but the authority was not limitless.

He pointed to reports of refugees stranded in dangerous places, families who sold everything they have owned in anticipation of travel that was later cancelled and families separated from relatives in the US.

Mr Trump’s order said the refugee programme — a form of legal migration to the US for people displaced by war, natural disaster or persecution — would be suspended because cities and communities had been taxed by “record levels of migration” and did not have the ability to “absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees”.

There are 600,000 people being processed to come to the US as refugees around the world, according to the administration.

Despite long-standing support from both major political parties for accepting thoroughly vetted refugees, the programme has become politicised in recent years.

Mr Trump also temporarily halted it during his first term, and then dramatically decreased the number of refugees who could enter the US each year.

The Justice Department argued that the order was well within Mr Trump’s authority.

The plaintiffs include the International Refugee Assistance Project on behalf of Church World Service, the Jewish refugee resettlement agency HIAS, Lutheran Community Services Northwest, and individual refugees and family members.

They said their ability to provide critical services to refugees, including those already in the US, has been severely inhibited by Trump’s order.