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In a significant legal setback for the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul U.S. immigration policy, a federal judge on Monday, May 5, ordered the admission of approximately 12,000 refugees into the United States.
The ruling clarifies an earlier decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which permitted the administration to temporarily suspend the refugee admissions program but required that individuals who had already been granted refugee status and approved for travel must still be allowed entry.
During a recent hearing, administration officials argued that they were only required to admit 160 refugees—those scheduled to arrive within two weeks of the January executive order that halted the refugee system. U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead forcefully rejected that interpretation.
“The government’s interpretation is, to put it mildly, ‘interpretive jiggery-pokery’ of the highest order,” Whitehead wrote in his opinion. “It requires not just reading between the lines, but hallucinating new text that simply is not there.”
Judge Whitehead had previously blocked the executive order in February, finding it likely violated the 1980 Refugee Act. However, the Ninth Circuit overturned that ruling in March, allowing the suspension to proceed—with specific exceptions.
“Had the Ninth Circuit intended to impose a two-week limitation—one that would reduce the protected population from about 12,000 to just 160 individuals—it would have said so explicitly,” Whitehead wrote. “This Court will not entertain the government’s result-oriented rewriting of a judicial order that clearly says what it says.”
The lawsuit was brought by multiple refugee resettlement organizations, including HIAS (a Jewish nonprofit), Church World Service, and Lutheran Community Services Northwest, along with several individual plaintiffs. They argued that thousands of refugees had sold their belongings and made travel preparations, only to be left stranded by the administration’s order.
Refugee resettlement has long been one of the few legal avenues to U.S. citizenship. Under President Joe Biden, the program was expanded to include individuals displaced by climate change. In contrast, former President Trump has sought steep reductions in immigration and conducted high-profile deportation operations, including military-led repatriation flights to Latin America.
This latest ruling may reopen a path for thousands of displaced individuals seeking refuge in the United States.
