Judge Orders Government to Let In About 12,000 Refugees

The ruling came after parties differed on the parameters of an appeals court opinion.

The U.S.–Mexico border fence ends with a gap east of Sasabe, Ariz., on Jan. 20, 2025. John Moore/Getty Images

The U.S. government must let some 12,000 refugees into the United States, a federal judge ruled on May 5.

“The Government’s obligation to process, admit, and provide statutorily mandated resettlement support services to the Injunction-Protected Refugees is immediate,” U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead wrote in the 14-page decision.

The judge in February blocked government officials from implementing an executive order from the president that suspended the entry of refugees into the country.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in March entered an emergency injunction against Whitehead’s order, apart from refugees who had been conditionally approved before President Donald Trump entered office on Jan. 20.

The circuit court later clarified that it was not attempting to force the government to grant entry to tens of thousands of refugees and outlined three criteria that conditionally approved individuals must meet.

The refugees must have an approved application that authorizes Customs and Border Protection to admit them “conditionally as a refugee upon arrival at the port within four months of the date the refugee application was approved,” have been cleared for travel by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to the United States, and have “arranged and confirmable travel plans to the United States,” the court said.

Lawyers for refugees and the government aligned on the first two points but diverged on the third. Lawyers for the plaintiffs said that arranged and confirmable travel plans meant plans that had been arranged and confirmed, regardless of date, while lawyers for the government said the travel must have been scheduled to take place within two weeks of Trump’s inauguration.

Whitehead rejected the latter view, writing that it “requires not just reading between the lines, but hallucinating new text that simply is not there.”

“The Ninth Circuit is capable of imposing temporal limitations when it intends to do so. That it did not do so here must be construed as deliberate,” he said.

If the government’s view was correct, according to the judge, it would take the number of refugees the government must admit from roughly 12,000 to 160.

Whitehead said the government must immediately process the approximately 12,000 refugees covered by the narrowed injunction and that the government may face sanctions if it fails to do so.

The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

The appeal of Whitehead’s injunction is still ongoing at the Ninth Circuit.