ACLU sues Biden over border executive order that allows him to turn back migrants

A coalition of civil rights groups is suing President Joe Biden’s administration to block an executive order that aims to ban people seeking asylum from crossing the US-Mexico border.

The ACLU and five other immigrants’ rights groups filed a federal lawsuit in Washington, DC, Wednesday on behalf of two Texas-based groups – Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services – after the president signed the order earlier this month.

The lawsuit argues the order creates a narrow path to asylum that flies in the face of federal law and mirrors a similar illegal order under former President Donald Trump that was rejected by the courts.

“We were left with no alternative but to sue,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement.

“The administration lacks unilateral authority to override Congress and bar asylum based on how one enters the country, a point the courts made crystal clear when the Trump administration unsuccessfully tried a near-identical ban,” he added.

Biden’s plan will effectively shut down asylum claims once the number of daily border encounters reaches 2,500 at ports of entry, and will only reopen once those daily encounters decline to 1,500. It remains unclear whether those terms have kicked in since the order was put in place earlier this month.

Critics have warned that such an action upends international guarantees that protect asylum rights for people on US soil, and will endanger the lives of thousands of people fleeing violence, instability and corruption below the southern border.

“Around the world, people are fleeing persecution and torture at higher rates than ever before,” according to National