A federal judge on Monday, May 5 ordered the Trump administration to admit approximately 12,000 refugees into the United States, delivering a legal setback to its broader efforts to reshape American immigration policy.
The ruling clarifies a previous appeals court decision that allowed the administration to temporarily suspend the refugee admissions program, but required that individuals already granted refugee status and approved for travel to the U.S. be admitted.
During a recent court hearing, the administration argued it was only obligated to admit 160 refugees who were scheduled to arrive within two weeks of the January executive order that halted the refugee system. But U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead firmly rejected that interpretation.
“The government’s interpretation is, to put it mildly, ‘interpretive jiggery-pokery’ of the highest order,” Judge Whitehead wrote in his decision. “It requires not just reading between the lines, but hallucinating new text that simply is not there.”
Whitehead had initially blocked the executive order in February, finding it likely violated the 1980 Refugee Act. However, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned his ruling in March, allowing the suspension of the program — with certain exceptions.
“Had the Ninth Circuit intended to impose a two-week limitation — one that would reduce the protected population from about 12,000 to 160 individuals — it would have done so explicitly,” Whitehead said in Monday’s ruling. “This Court will not entertain the government’s result-oriented rewriting of a judicial order that clearly says what it says.”
The lawsuit was filed by several refugee resettlement organizations, including HIAS (a Jewish nonprofit), Church World Service, and Lutheran Community Services Northwest, along with a number of individual plaintiffs. They argued that many refugees had sold their possessions and prepared for travel, only to be left stranded by the administration’s order.
Refugee resettlement has traditionally been one of the few legal pathways to U.S. citizenship and was expanded under former President Joe Biden to include individuals affected by climate change. Trump, by contrast, has advocated for sharp reductions in immigration and has overseen high-profile deportation operations, including military-led repatriation flights to Latin America.
This latest ruling could reopen the door for thousands of displaced individuals to continue their journeys to the United States.
