Opponents of President Donald Trump’s executive order indefinitely halting refugee resettlement in the U.S. celebrate on the steps of the federal courthouse in Seattle after a judge issued a ruling blocking the president’s order. (Photo by Jake Goldstein-Street)
A federal judge in Seattle on Tuesday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order halting the admission of refugees into the United States.
The ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Jamal Whitehead, a Biden appointee, is the first to block Trump’s order indefinitely suspending the United States Refugee Admissions Program.
Whitehead said the president’s order likely “crossed the line.”
The order, one of many the president signed on his first day in office, describes the country as “inundated with record levels of migration” over the past four years, threatening resources for U.S. citizens.
The order says Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem should recommend within 90 days whether the refugee program should resume.
The move stranded thousands of refugees expecting to come to the country. Days later, the White House also suspended funding for resettlement agencies, leading to layoffs and furloughs.
Tuesday’s ruling comes days after a federal judge in Washington D.C. denied a request to temporarily block the refugee funding freeze in a separate case.
Nine affected individuals and three resettlement organizations, including Lutheran Community Services Northwest in Tacoma, filed the lawsuit in Seattle court this month. The individual plaintiffs, identified in court papers only by their first names, include refugees, refugee applicants and people in the United States sponsoring refugees.
One of them, a Bellevue woman, was sponsoring an Afghan refugee family before the federal government suspended their case, according to the complaint. Another was a refugee named Sara who was fleeing Iraq and awaiting travel plans to join her eldest son in Idaho before Trump’s executive order.
“When Sara closes her eyes, she still imagines herself at the airport and the joy she would feel in seeing her oldest son waiting for her,” the lawsuit reads. “He is now a U.S. citizen and is expecting his first child. Sara is crushed that she might miss the birth of her first grandchild.”
The plaintiffs argue Trump’s order violates the Administrative Procedure Act by skirting the usual process for agency actions. They claim the policy must include a public comment period under the law.
They also argue the executive action is at odds with the Refugee Act of 1980 that laid out the process for letting refugees into the country.
Attorneys for the Trump administration countered in court filings, stating Congress has delegated the admission of refugees to the president. So he can block their entry if he finds it “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States,” the Justice Department wrote.
The president also sets the refugee admissions goal each year. At the end of his first term, Trump set that number at 15,000. Last year, former President Joe Biden set the benchmark at 125,000.
“The president can set the number at zero and there’s no requirement for an explanation of that,” August Flentje, of the Department of Justice, said in court Tuesday.
In his first term, Trump tried to block refugee arrivals various times, leading to numerous successful court challenges. The plaintiffs say his order this time around goes even further than his previous attempts.
In an amicus brief, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, a Democrat, and colleagues from 18 other states sided with the plaintiffs. The brief states Washington resettled 4% of the refugees nationwide in fiscal year 2024.
The states called the order “arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law.”
The judge’s injunction in the case, known as Pacito v. Trump, will remain in effect until the case is resolved, unless the Justice Department successfully appeals it.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would have jurisdiction over the appeal. Democratic presidents appointed a majority of the circuit court’s judges. The case would next go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
This is the latest rebuke for a Trump executive order from a federal judge in Seattle. Other judges have also sided against the Trump administration in cases against his birthright citizenship and gender-affirming care orders. The Washington state attorney general’s office brought both of those cases.