On June 30th, a federal court judge ruled against the Trump administration’s “third country asylum rule,” which unlawfully required people to apply for asylum in “safe” third countries they passed through before seeking protection in the United States. In his decision, Judge Timothy Kelly wrote: “[the Court] holds that Defendants unlawfully promulgated the rule without complying with the APA’s notice-and-comment requirements, because neither the ‘good cause’ nor the ‘foreign affairs function’ exceptions are satisfied on the record here.”
The Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program (HIRC) applauds this decision, which will allow those fleeing violence to access their right to seek asylum in the United States.