US judge blocks Trump's latest sweeping asylum rule

A federal judge in San Francisco on Wednesday blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a new rule that aimed to bar almost all asylum applications at the US-Mexico border.

US District Judge Jon Tigar in the Northern District of California issued a preliminary injunction blocking the rule, which would require asylum-seekers to first pursue safe haven in a third country they had traveled through on their way to the United States.

The decision makes inconsequential a ruling by Washington D.C. District Judge Timothy Kelly earlier in the day that declined to block the rule in a different lawsuit brought by immigration advocacy groups, lawyers said.

The Trump administration had been quick to celebrate that decision, saying it would discourage abuse of the asylum process.

Following the action by the San Francisco court, the rule will now be suspended pending further proceedings.

"Today's ruling is an important victory for incredibly vulnerable individuals and families," said Melissa Crow, an attorney from the Southern Poverty Law Center - one of the groups challenging the ban - in a statement.

The Trump administration has sought to curtail the increasing numbers of mostly Central American migrants arriving at the US -Mexico border after fleeing violence and poverty in countries such as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. It has characterized the vast majority of their asylum claims as bogus.

After the White House announced the rule on July 16, the American Civil Liberties Union and other rights groups sued in California on the grounds it violates US law that welcomes those who come to the United States fleeing persecution at home.

Immigration is shaping up to be a focus of the presidential campaign again in 2020. In the 2016 election, voters rewarded then-candidate Donald Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric, sending him to the White House after he promised to build a wall on the US-Mexico border and called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States.