Stephen Miller's Border Blueprint Gets Shredded in Federal Court

A D.C. Circuit panel rules Trump’s asylum ban is unlawful, dealing a major blow to the administration’s most aggressive immigration gambit.

WASHINGTON — The legal scaffolding Stephen Miller spent years engineering around the southern border took a significant hit Thursday when a federal appeals court ruled that President Trump’s Inauguration Day proclamation effectively shutting down asylum was unlawful — and ordered the government to stop using it.

The ruling from a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is one of the most consequential rebukes to Miller’s immigration strategy since Trump returned to power, striking at the heart of a legal theory the administration has used to justify some of its most aggressive border enforcement moves.

“The president cannot unilaterally eliminate the right to seek asylum by executive order,” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt, who argued the appeal, said after the ruling. He added the decision could “potentially save the lives of thousands of people fleeing grave danger.”

What Miller Built — and What the Court Just Dismantled

On Inauguration Day 2025, Trump signed a presidential proclamation declaring that migration at the southern border constituted an “invasion” of the United States. The proclamation — issued under 8 U.S.C. 1182(f), a provision allowing the president to suspend entry of certain noncitizens — purported to halt not just the physical entry of migrants crossing between ports of entry, but their statutory right to apply for asylum altogether.

DHS and DOJ followed with implementing guidance that created ultra-expedited removal procedures: rushed screenings, often by phone, often without a lawyer, often without a meaningful right to appeal — even for people claiming torture or persecution.

It was Miller’s legal handiwork made operational. And Thursday, the D.C. Circuit called it illegal.

Writing for the majority, Judge J. Michelle Childs, joined by Judge Cornelia Pillard, held that the INA’s “text, structure, and history” make clear that Congress never intended the president’s 1182(f) suspension power to authorize a wholesale rewrite of removal procedures — or the elimination of asylum, withholding of removal, and Convention Against Torture protections that Congress itself encoded into law.

The court was direct: the proclamation and its implementing guidance are unlawful “to the extent that they circumvent the INA’s removal procedures and cast aside federal laws affording individuals the right to apply and be considered for asylum or withholding of removal protections.”

The Human Cost Behind the Legal Fight

Before the ruling, advocates and reporters had documented what Miller’s system looked like on the ground: asylum seekers subjected to screenings as short as a few minutes, given no attorney, no appeal, and in some cases removed without any fear interview at all — even when they told officials they had been tortured.

The case, RAICES v. Noem, was brought by a coalition of civil-rights and immigrant-rights organizations including the ACLU, RAICES, the National Immigrant Justice Center, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, and the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project. A federal district court in Washington had already certified a nationwide class of affected asylum seekers and issued orders limiting the government’s use of the new procedures.

The D.C. Circuit affirmed that class — and its nationwide scope — Thursday.

One Dissent, One Roadmap to SCOTUS

The ruling was not unanimous. Judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee, concurred in part but dissented from the core holding — arguing for a more expansive view of executive power over the border. His dissent doesn’t change the outcome, but it hands the administration a legal argument to press at the Supreme Court, where a 6-3 conservative majority will ultimately decide how far Miller’s preferred reading of 1182(f) can go.

The White House has already signaled it will seek further review — either from the full D.C. Circuit sitting en banc, or directly from the Supreme Court, potentially with an emergency request to stay the ruling while the justices consider whether to take the case.

If the Court accepts it, the stakes extend well beyond immigration. The justices will have to decide whether 1182(f) is the presidential blank check Miller has always argued it is — or whether, as the D.C. Circuit now holds, it must be read narrowly to avoid letting the executive swallow the statute Congress wrote.

What Comes Next

Unless a stay is granted, the government is bound by Thursday’s decision: it cannot use the proclamation to deny asylum, withholding, or CAT protections, or to short-circuit the INA’s removal framework for the certified class.

Advocates say that, if fully implemented, the ruling could allow thousands of people rushed through the proclamation-era process to seek new screenings or move to reopen their cases.

How aggressively the administration complies — and how quickly it races to the Supreme Court — are the next questions worth watching.

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