White House whines that judge won't let Trump lock up asylum-seekers as long as he wants

A federal judge in Washington State ruled against the Trump administration’s policy of indefinitely jailing immigrants seeking asylum at the border without a bond hearing — and the Trump administration is not happy.

Rather than accept the decision of U.S. District Judge Marsha J. Pechman, the White House instead chose to politicize the courts, slamming the judge as an “unelected” supporter of “open borders.”

“No single district judge has legitimate authority to impose his or her open borders views on the country,” the White House said in a statement.

Of course, federal judges do have the authority to block policies that are before them, such as Trump’s harsh treatment of immigrants fleeing violence to seek asylum in the United States.

Pechman ruled that these asylum-seekers must be given a bond hearing within seven days of requesting one, and if they do not receive a hearing in that time frame must be released, according to the New York Times.

She wrote that the plaintiffs suing the Trump administration in this case, “established a constitutionally protected interest in their liberty, a right to due process, which includes a hearing before a neutral decision maker to assess the necessity of their detention and a likelihood of success on the merits of that issue.”

Currently, Trump has ordered asylum-seekers to be held in detention facilities until their claims are heard — which has led to overcrowding and horrid conditions, including asylum-seekers being forced to drink out of toilets, go without showers for weeks at a time, and sleep on floors without adequate beds or blankets.

The conditions these immigrants are being held in at the border is so bad that federal inspectors with the Department of Homeland Security called it a “ticking time bomb.”

But the Trump administration doesn’t care about that, nor the suffering of human beings.

Instead, they chose to whine about a binding order from a federal judge that says their treatment of immigrants at the border violates the Constitution.

So much for respecting the rule of law.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.