Stephen Miller Spirals After Judge Shuts Down Trump’s Asylum Ban

Trump adviser Stephen Miller is up in arms after a federal district court judge dealt a significant blow to Trump’s immigration agenda Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss ruled unlawful Trump’s day-one proclamation shutting down the right to claim asylum at the southern border on the dubious grounds that an “invasion” is occurring there.

In response, Miller claimed that Moss, an Obama appointee, is a “marxist judge” attempting to “circumvent the Supreme Court.” Quote-tweeting that post, Miller added, “The West will not survive if our sovereignty is not restored.”

In his 128-page ruling, Moss said that Trump’s proclamation asserted “sweeping authority” that far exceeds the powers he legally possesses under the Constitution and the Immigration and Nationality Act. And the Trump administration’s “appeal to necessity cannot fill that void.”

Contrary to Trump’s arguments, Moss wrote, the president does not have “the unilateral authority to limit the rights of aliens present in the United States to apply for asylum,” nor does he have the “authority to adopt an alternative immigration system, which supplants the statutes that Congress has enacted and the regulations that the responsible agencies have promulgated.”

The ruling, which applies to all people “who are now or will be present in the United States,” effectively stops the proclamation in its tracks—at least after a two-week stay, during which the president is expected to appeal. In the interim, Moss said the administration “shall take steps to ensure that they … are fully prepared to implement the Court’s order without further delay.”

Deborah Pearlstein of Princeton University noted that Moss’s ruling exemplifies how courts may still rein in Trump’s unlawful actions, even after the Supreme Court recently impeded their ability to do so in a ruling restricting lower courts’ ability to issue nationwide freezes on Trump’s anti-constitutional executive orders.

Moss mentioned that Supreme Court case in his ruling, but cited the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law that directs courts to “set aside” federal actions found to be “not in accordance with law.”