A federal appeals court on Friday struck down President Trump's effort to bar migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border from applying for asylum, ruling 2-1 that the administration's sweeping proclamation ignored the authority Congress holds over immigration law. The decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upholds a July 2025 ruling by District Judge Randolph Moss, who found the president had overstepped his power in severely limiting asylum for migrants fleeing danger and persecution.
The White House wasted no time pushing back. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt, appearing on Fox News Friday afternoon, said she had not yet read the ruling, then dismissed the judges behind it as politically motivated.
The ruling effectively blocks a proclamation Trump signed on the first day of his second term. In it, the president argued that the volume of foreign nationals attempting to cross the southern border amounted to an "invasion" that prevented the federal government from maintaining operational control. Two Democratic-appointed judges overruled that argument. One Trump-selected judge dissented.
Judges Michelle Childs, a Biden appointee, and Nina Pillard, an Obama appointee, formed the majority. Judge Justin Walker, selected by Trump, cast the lone dissenting vote. The majority's language left little room for ambiguity, as The Hill reported:
"Congress enacted the asylum statute, with narrow exceptions specified by statute, to grant all foreign individuals 'physically present' in the United States a right to apply for asylum and have their individual applications adjudicated."
The judges then pointed the administration toward the branch of government they said holds the pen on immigration law.
"If the Government wishes to modify this carefully structured and intricate system, it must present those arguments to the only branch of government able to amend the INA [Immigration and Nationality Act]: Congress."
That framing, that the Immigration and Nationality Act reserves asylum decisions to Congress, not the executive, has become a recurring theme in legal challenges to the administration's border agenda. It is a familiar argument in recent D.C. Circuit rulings that have drawn sharp lines around presidential power on immigration.
The case did not arrive at the appeals court overnight. District Judge Moss, an Obama appointee, first ruled in July 2025 that the president had overstepped. Last year, the D.C. Circuit issued an administrative pause on that ruling, temporarily giving the government room to enforce its proclamation.
The appeals court eventually lifted the stay but narrowed Moss's original order. Under the narrowed terms, the government could carry out Trump's directive to block migrants from the asylum system, but could not disqualify them from other forms of protection against torture. Friday's 2-1 decision now goes further, upholding Moss's core finding that the proclamation exceeded executive authority.
Whether the administration will appeal to the Supreme Court remains an open question. The ruling did not indicate any next procedural step, and Leavitt offered no specifics on a potential appeal during her Fox News appearance.
The White House response was blunt. Leavitt acknowledged she had not reviewed the decision but framed it as part of a broader pattern of judicial interference. She told Fox News:
"Unfortunately, while it's newsy, it's unsurprising to me. We have liberal judges across the country who are acting against this president for political purposes."
She went further, asserting the president's constitutional authority over border security and suggesting the judges owed Trump gratitude rather than a legal rebuke.
"Everything that this president has done and signed with respect to the southern border is completely within his powers as commander in chief, and these judges should be thanking the president of the United States for ending the border invasion that was allowed by the previous administration."
The reference to the "previous administration" reflects a consistent White House argument: that the Biden-era border policies created the crisis the current president inherited and is now trying to fix. That argument resonates with millions of Americans who watched illegal crossings surge under Biden, but courts have repeatedly held that the remedy must fit within existing statutory authority, not override it.
The administration has faced turbulence on multiple fronts in recent weeks, from personnel departures to legal setbacks. This ruling adds another item to the list of court orders constraining the White House's immigration enforcement strategy.
Friday's asylum ruling does not stand alone. In a separate case, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs ordered the Trump administration to reverse its revocation of legal status for migrants who entered the country through the Biden-era CBP One app. That ruling, reported by Fox News, found that the Department of Homeland Security acted unlawfully when it sent mass emails to many of the roughly 900,000 app users telling them it was "time for you to leave the United States."
Judge Burroughs wrote that DHS failed to follow statutory and regulatory procedures required to terminate parole, including providing a record showing an official determination that parole had served its purpose. "The regulations do not give the agency unfettered discretion to terminate parole," she wrote.
Taken together, the two rulings illustrate a recurring problem for the administration: executive actions that move faster than the legal framework allows. The intent, to restore order at the southern border, enjoys broad public support. But courts have insisted, again and again, that the mechanism matters as much as the goal.
Trump has previously responded to judicial setbacks with forceful public statements, declaring the U.S. border the strongest in history and defending key officials tasked with carrying out his agenda. The question now is whether the administration will pursue a legislative path, working with Congress to amend the INA, or continue pressing its case through the courts.
The majority opinion's instruction, take it to Congress, is legally sound on its face. The INA does grant individuals physically present in the United States the right to apply for asylum. That is the statute as written.
But the statute was not written for a border that saw millions of illegal crossings in a span of years. It was not designed for a system so overwhelmed that processing backlogs stretch into the hundreds of thousands. And it was not drafted with the expectation that an entire political party would treat enforcement as optional for the better part of a presidential term.
The judges who decided this case were appointed by Obama and Biden. The lone dissenter was selected by Trump. That lineup does not automatically make the ruling wrong, but it does explain why the White House sees a pattern. And it raises a fair question: when the judiciary blocks every executive attempt to restore order at the border, and Congress refuses to act, who exactly is supposed to fix the problem?
Legal battles over redistricting, executive authority, and the limits of judicial power continue to shape the political landscape in ways that voters feel long after the rulings come down. This case is no different.
The administration may yet prevail on appeal. Or Congress may finally do its job and update an immigration framework that everyone agrees is broken. But until one of those things happens, the people living with the consequences of a porous border, the border towns, the overwhelmed communities, the legal immigrants who followed the rules, will keep waiting for a system that works.
Courts can tell a president what he cannot do. They cannot secure the border themselves. And neither, it seems, can a Congress that would rather let judges run the show.