Appeals Court Rules Trump Can Suspend Refugee Admissions

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump has legal authority to indefinitely suspend the admission of foreign nationals who are trying to enter the United States through its refugee resettlement program, a federal appeals court ruled on March 5.

Trump froze refugee resettlement programs as he took office in January 2025.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued the new opinion in the case known as Pacito v. Trump.

The panel overturned most of the injunctions that Seattle-based U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead issued in February 2025. The judge had blocked Trump’s move to suspend the refugee resettlement program indefinitely, finding the president had gone beyond his legal authority by pausing the program.

In March 2025, the Ninth Circuit paused most of Whitehead’s rulings in favor of the plaintiffs and allowed Trump’s policy to be enforced while the litigation played out.

Trump signed Executive Order 14163 on Jan. 20, 2025. It said that the entry of refugees into the United States under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) would be detrimental to the country and that the entry of refugees under the program should be suspended.

In Executive Order 14169, signed the same day, Trump directed that funding be suspended for the processing of applications from individuals outside the United States seeking refugee status. He also cut off funding for domestic settlement services for refugees who have been admitted to the United States.

In the new ruling, Circuit Judge Jay Bybee noted that the plaintiffs consisted of refugees recently admitted to the United States and refugees approved for U.S. resettlement but who are outside the country. Also among the plaintiffs were U.S.-based individuals seeking admission for family members or sponsees, and three organizations that had agreements with the U.S. Department of State to provide overseas processing and domestic resettlement services, he said.

The plaintiffs argued that Trump’s suspension of the refugee program violated the Immigration and Nationality Act and that defunding the program violated the Administrative Procedure Act.

The Administrative Procedure Act is a federal statute enacted in 1946 that governs administrative law procedures for federal executive departments and independent agencies. The late U.S. Sen. Pat McCarran (D-Nev.) said at the time the law was “a bill of rights for the hundreds of thousands of Americans whose affairs are controlled or regulated in one way or another by agencies of the federal government.”

Bybee said the court recognizes the “enormous practical implications of this decision,” which largely overrules Whitehead’s orders.

“There are over one hundred thousand vetted and conditionally approved refugees, many of whom may have spent years completing the USRAP process in a third country only to be turned away on the tarmac,” he said.

In the Immigration and Nationality Act, Congress gave the president the power to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens,” and it is not for the court to decide if this is a “prudent policy,” Bybee said.

The panel voted 2–1 to uphold Whitehead’s orders preventing the federal government from ending services to already-admitted refugees and the termination of agreements with resettlement support centers.

Circuit Judge Kenneth Lee dissented in that vote, saying he would have completely reversed Whitehead’s orders.

“District courts cannot stand athwart, yelling ‘stop’ just because they genuinely believe they are the last refuge against policies that they deem to be deeply unwise,” Lee said.

A Department of Justice spokesman said the panel’s ruling “reaffirms that activist district court judges cannot usurp the power of the president to protect the American people and set refugee policy for the United States.”

Mevlude Akay Apl, an attorney for the plaintiffs with the International Refugee Assistance Project, said the panel’s ruling “removes the ability for refugees stranded by the refugee ban to be safely resettled, or even have their cases processed, while President Trump’s cruel ban continues.”