Why you pack the courts - another reason

The supreme court ruled on Wednesday to allow the Trump administration to enforce nationwide restrictions that would prevent most Central American immigrants from seeking asylum in the US.

[...]

The justices’ order late Wednesday temporarily undoes a lower-court ruling that had blocked the new asylum policy in some states along the southern border.

Most people crossing the southern border are Central Americans fleeing violence and poverty. They are largely ineligible under the new rule, as are asylum seekers from Africa, Asia and South America who arrive regularly at the southern border.

[...]

Groups challenging the policy in court say that it violates the US refugee act and the UN refugee convention guaranteeing the right to seek asylum to those fleeing persecution.

The shift reverses decades of US policy. The administration has said that it wants to close the gap between an initial asylum screening that most people pass and a final decision on asylum that most people do not win.

[...]

The high-court action leaves the administration free to impose the new policy everywhere while the court case against it continues.

[...]

Lee Gelernt, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who is representing immigrant advocacy groups in the case, said: “This is just a temporary step, and we’re hopeful we’ll prevail at the end of the day. The lives of thousands of families are at stake.”

[...]

In a scathing dissent, justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sonya Sotomayor say that the supreme court “sidesteps the ordinary judicial process” by overriding proceedings in the lower courts.

  The Guardian

Mitch McConnell's job is almost done. He only has to finish packing all those lower courts, too.