Trump's refugee ban temporarily blocked by federal judge in Seattle

A federal judge in Seattle has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order freezing refugee arrivals and funding.

Tuesday's ruling marks the second major thwarting of the president's executive immigration orders by a Washington state judge since he retook the Oval Office last month.

U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead said Tuesday that the president's discretion in setting policy is "not limitless," and he was persuaded that stranded refugees and the organizations serving them could face concrete irreparable harm if the order were left in place while the case proceeds. Whitehead said he will issue a written order in the coming days.

The attorney representing the Trump administration, August Flentje, indicated the Department of Justice will seek a stay of the judge’s order during the appeals process. Flentje said given that the federal Refugee Act allows the president to set a target number of refugees allowed per year, Trump is within his rights to temporarily suspend the program.

Whitehead, however, said Trump’s order did not provide clear criteria for reinstating it. The judge also noted that the executive order took effect Jan. 27, but federal agencies implemented it immediately, disrupting travel for refugees poised to make their way to the U.S.

RELATED: Lawsuit targeting Trump's refugee ban to go before federal judge in Seattle

Attorneys for the plaintiffs said their understanding of the ruling is that processing of refugees can begin again immediately.

Deepa Alagesan is a senior supervising attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project who argued the case in court. Alagesan said the plaintiffs include refugees in the U.S. whose assistance was abruptly cut off, refugees abroad who are stranded by the ban, and organizations that lost tens of millions of dollars overnight and may face “existential threats to their continued existence."

"These are the urgent and extreme harms resulting from President Trump’s policies, but today we stopped them,” Alagesan said to cheers of supporters outside the federal courthouse.

The plaintiffs included three faith-based nonprofit organizations that receive federal grants to aid refugees in the resettlement process, including paying for food, housing and other supports for the first 90 days. They and their supporters hailed the judge’s order.

“It has been breaking my heart to hear all the myths that have been spread about what it means to be a refugee and who we are,” Reverend Emillie Binja told the assembled crowd. “Thank you for seeing our suffering, for standing with us and for fighting with us.”

Binja came to the U.S. as a refugee after she fled the Democratic Republic of Congo at age eight. She’s now the pastor of Creator Lutheran Church in Clackamas, Oregon.

Mark Hetfield is the president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), described as the Jewish community’s refugee agency.

“The Torah commands us 36 times to welcome the stranger, for we were once strangers ourselves,” Hetfield said. “And we are so happy that because of this court we can continue fulfilling that commandment in this country.”

Plaintiffs filed their lawsuit on Feb. 10, arguing the sweeping order signed on Trump’s first day in office goes far beyond his efforts to constrain refugee arrivals in his first term. It has suspended all refugee admissions and processing indefinitely, and “stopped federal funding of the organizations that have served refugees for decades, crippling their ability to provide resettlement services.”

Trump's executive order titled Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program called the refugee admissions program "detrimental to the interests of the United States," and said, “The United States lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities in a manner that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans, that protects their safety and security, and that ensures the appropriate assimilation of refugees.”

The lawsuit challenging that order said the lead plaintiff, referred to by the name Pacito, “is a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who was approved for resettlement to the United States and scheduled to travel with his family on January 22, 2025, before their travel was abruptly canceled. Pacito and his family currently reside in Nairobi, Kenya.” (The lawsuit said plaintiffs seek anonymity due to the harms they and their families could face if their participation in the lawsuit becomes public.)

Pacito was scheduled to travel on Jan. 22 with his wife and baby and had sold all of the family’s possessions and given up their rental house in preparation, according to the lawsuit. He then learned that their travel had been canceled.

More broadly, the lawsuit claims that refugees affected by Trump’s order now face “ongoing, serious, and irreparable harms.”

The Trump administration’s motion to deny the preliminary injunction said the harms asserted by refugees and their advocates “are greatly outweighed by the harm to the government and public interest that would result from an order taking the unprecedented step of enjoining the President from exercising his Constitutional and statutory power over the admission of refugees.”

The three faith-based organizations leading the lawsuit are Church World Service, HIAS, and Lutheran Community Services Northwest.

RELATED: Seattle judge blocks Trump order to end birthright citizenship — again

The lawsuit is playing out in the same courthouse where Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson made headlines in 2017 when he successfully challenged Trump’s earliest order targeting refugees. Trump attacked U.S. District Judge James Robart’s granting of a temporary restraining order in that case as “ridiculous,” describing Robart, a George W. Bush appointee, as a “so-called judge.”