A Broad Ruling Against Trump’s Immigration Policies Illustrates Alternatives to Universal Injunctions
Last Friday in Trump v. CASA, the Supreme Court concluded that federal judges do not have the power to grant “universal injunctions” against executive actions or federal legislation. Rather, it said, any “equitable remedies” in such cases must be limited to the named plaintiffs.
On Wednesday, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., nevertheless issued an order broadly precluding federal officials from implementing the asylum restrictions and streamlined deportation procedures that resulted from a proclamation that President Donald Trump issued on his first day in office. That decision in RAICES v. Noem illustrates two alternatives to universal injunctions that can have much the same effect.
Unlike the Judiciary Act of 1789, the source of judicial authority that the Supreme Court construed last week in Trump v. CASA, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) explicitly requires federal courts to “set aside” agency actions when they are “arbitrary,” “capricious,” “an abuse of discretion,” or otherwise contrary to law. The plaintiffs in RAICES v. Noem—13 individuals and three nonprofit organizations—argued that the immigration policies implemented under Trump’s January 20 proclamation violated the APA.
U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss agreed and therefore “set aside” the agency guidance documents that were issued in response to Trump’s proclamation. Quoting Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Moss noted “countless” decisions in which the Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, complying with the APA’s command, have “vacated agency actions…rather than merely providing injunctive relief that enjoined enforcement of the rules against the specific plaintiffs.”
The plaintiffs in RAICES v. Noem, who argued that the new restrictions and procedures exceeded the president’s statutory and constitutional authority, also asked Moss to certify a class of similarly situated individuals affected by the proclamation. He did that too, issuing an injunction that bars Trump’s underlings from “implementing” the proclamation against “all individuals who are or will be” subject to it and “who are now or will be present in the United States.” He left for another day the question of relief for people who already have been deported as a result of the proclamation.
Moss concluded that the injunction was appropriate and necessary because federal officials had indicated they would continue enforcing the new immigration policies based on Trump’s proclamation even if the guidance documents were vacated. The upshot is essentially the same as what would have happened under a universal injunction of the sort that the Supreme Court just said federal courts are not authorized to issue.
Trump’s proclamation, which described the “ongoing influx of illegal aliens across the southern border” as an “invasion” requiring a presidential response, included five operative sections. The first section invoked 8 USC 1182(f), which empowers the president to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens” when he “finds” that their entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States,” and 8 USC 1185(a), which makes it illegal to enter the United States “except under such reasonable rules, regulations, and orders, and subject to such limitations and exceptions as the President may prescribe.” Based on that authority, Trump “suspended” the entry of aliens “engaged in the invasion across the southern border.”
On its face, that “suspension of entry” was redundant, since it applied only to migrants who already were legally barred from entering the United States. But the second section, which also invoked Section 1182(f) and Section 1185(a), went beyond the status quo by declaring that those “illegal aliens” would b
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