(Reuters) – A U.S. federal appeals court in San Francisco on Friday blocked a Trump administration policy that has forced tens of thousands of migrants to wait in Mexico for months for hearings in U.S. immigration courts.
Three judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the policy conflicted with the text and congressional purpose of U.S. immigration laws.
The program, which began a year ago and is called the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), is one of the most dramatic immigration policy changes enacted by the Trump administration.
The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment but the administration is likely to quickly appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court as it has done with other rulings.
Some 59,000 people have been sent back to Mexico under the program, which started in San Diego before being expanded to other ports of entry all across the U.S-Mexico border. [L2N25W1G1]
Migrants, many of them children, have faced violence and homelessness as they wait for their court dates in dangerous border cities. At least 343 people returned under the program were violently attacked or threatened in Mexico, according to an Oct. 1 Human Rights Watch report which documented kidnappings, rapes and assaults.
Reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York; Additional reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Howard Goller