A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to resume processing approximately 12,000 refugees whose entry to the United States was abruptly halted following President Donald Trump’s executive order suspending the nation’s refugee admissions program. In a pointed rebuke of the administration’s legal tactics, U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead accused the government of misrepresenting both statutory obligations and the clear language of prior judicial rulings.
“This Court will not entertain the Government’s result-oriented rewriting of a judicial order that clearly says what it says,” Judge Whitehead wrote Monday.
He further criticized the administration’s legal argument as requiring “not just reading between the lines… but hallucinating new text that simply is not there.”
Upon beginning his second term on January 20, President Trump signed an executive order suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP)—a decades-old system established under the 1980 Refugee Act that offers a legal path for individuals fleeing war, persecution, or disaster. Refugees in the program undergo years-long vetting, usually after being referred to the U.S. by the United Nations or other agencies.
Trump’s sudden freeze affected thousands who had already completed that process, prompting a lawsuit from refugee resettlement agencies and affected individuals who argued that the executive order violated congressional intent and undermined the rule of law.
In February, Judge Whitehead blocked enforcement of the executive order, describing it as an “effective nullification of congressional will.” While the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals partially stayed that ruling in March, it explicitly required the administration to continue processing refugees who had “arranged and confirmable” travel plans before the freeze.
But the Justice Department, represented by attorney David Kim, argued the order only applied to the 160 refugees who had been scheduled to arrive in the U.S. within two weeks of Trump’s executive action. Whitehead dismissed that interpretation as a bad-faith narrowing of the appellate court’s directive.
“Interpretive jiggery-pokery,” he called it.
Whitehead’s Monday ruling reasserts that all 12,000 refugees with pre-established travel plans are covered by the court’s protection—regardless of whether they were set to travel immediately or later. He ordered the administration to:
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Instruct U.S. embassies and agency offices within seven days to resume processing all refugee cases protected by the ruling.
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Facilitate admission for refugees whose medical, security, or other clearances are still valid.
The judge left the door open for the government to seek further clarification from the 9th Circuit, but emphasized that such appeals do not excuse the government from obeying existing court orders.
The ruling offers renewed hope to thousands of vetted refugees—many of whom had sold property, left jobs, or made life-altering plans based on U.S. government assurances that they would be resettled. For them, Trump’s executive freeze created not just logistical hurdles, but deep uncertainty about their safety and future.
Refugee advocacy groups applauded the ruling. In their original lawsuit, they condemned the administration’s action as “severely harmful and irrational conduct that flouts the rule of law.”
