Homeland Security Barred From Keeping Asylum Seekers in Mexico

The Trump administration’s plans to restart a program that requires asylum seekers to remain in Mexico pending their appeals experienced a setback after a federal court put the program on hold nationwide.

The US District Court for the Central District of California on Wednesday granted a stay to the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a group that provides legal counsel to immigrants and one of the plaintiffs in the case.

Reimplementation of the Migrant Protection Protocols—originally adopted during the first Trump administration—violates federal law, Judge Jesus G. Bernal said.

The plaintiffs, a group of individual asylum seekers as well as ImmDef and Jewish Family Services of San Diego, sued in 2020 over the first implementation of the MPP, arguing that the policy deprives individuals who remain outside the US of legal representation. Doing so violates the Administrative Procedure Act, and it violates the groups’ First Amendment right to advise clients, frustrates their missions, and requires them to expend resources they would otherwise use elsewhere, they said.

The case was put on hold after the Biden administration revoked the MPP, and resumed when the second Trump administration announced an intention to reinstate them.

The Immigration and Nationality Act says asylum seekers who arrive by land “from a foreign territory contiguous to the United States” may be returned to that territory pending their removal proceedings. The Department of Homeland Security argued that the INA overrode the APA’s provision that allows courts to postpone agency actions when necessary.

But Bernal said ImmDef’s claims aren’t barred by the INA because the individual plaintiffs seek access to the administrative process that exists separately from the removal process.

ImmDef claimed the MPP unlawfully restricted the group’s speech right to advise clients. In some instances they were denied access to their clients while they were in the US, and in others the group’s attorneys had to travel to Mexico and find safe locations to meet with their clients.

Bernal found that ImmDef demonstrated a likelihood of success on the First Amendment claim. They seek to engage in protected speech by “advising, assisting, and consulting with asylum-seeking clients,” and their mission includes advocating for immigrants seeking asylum at the southern border, he said.

The MPP likely violates an immigrant’s right to apply for asylum, Bernal said. The INA provisions the DHS cited don’t mention asylum, and nothing suggests that “Congress intended to undermine or modify the right to apply for asylum,” he said.

The MPP also likely violates the APA because DHS didn’t consider how leaving individuals stranded in Mexico “in life-threatening conditions and without access to legal representation would obstruct these individuals’ access to the U.S. asylum system,” Bernal said.

ImmDef will likely suffer irreparable harm in the absence of a stay, Bernal said. DHS also doesn’t have discretionary authority or legitimate reasons to enforce unconstitutional or illegal policies, he added.

Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, Southern Poverty Law Center, Innovation Law Lab, National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, and National Immigration Project represented the organizational plaintiffs. The US Department of Justice represented the defendants.

The case is Immigrant Defs. Law Ctr. v. Noem, 2025 BL 129583, C.D. Cal., No. 2:20-cv-09893, 4/16/25.