The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed this week that President Donald Trump possesses full presidential authority to suspend refugee resettlement to the country, according to a report by Breitbart News.
The panel of judges on the nation's largest federal appellate court vacated a lower court's injunction against the Trump administration's executive order halting refugee admissions. The judges determined that Congress grants broad powers over immigration to the president.
"The panel concluded that Plaintiffs failed to make a strong showing that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their challenges to Executive Order No. 14163 as beyond the President's statutory authority under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f) and the Refugee Act," the panel wrote.
The court rejected the district court's concerns that the president impermissibly suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program in its entirety and indefinitely. The judges further noted that nothing in the Refugee Act directs the president to continue processing applications while admissions have been suspended.
Dale Wilcox with the Federation for American Immigration Reform celebrated the decision after his organization filed a brief supporting Trump's authority to suspend refugee resettlement.
"We don't have to take any refugees, and whether we do so is a matter of policy, not law," Wilcox said. "The law lets Trump block their entry if he sees fit. We are pleased the court recognized the President's prerogative and vacated the lower court's activist injunction."
The case is Pacito v. Trump, No. 2:25-cv-00255-JNW in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
This ruling confirms what America First advocates have long understood. The president possesses the constitutional and statutory authority to defend the nation's borders and determine who enters the country. True immigration reform requires not merely suspending refugee admissions but comprehensively restricting all forms of illegal and legal immigration, fully militarizing the southern border with troops authorized to repel invaders, and dramatically increasing internal enforcement to remove the millions of illegal aliens already residing within the homeland.
