DOVER: Marchers wave to detainees in the prison as they go by Strafford County Detention Center, where ICE detainees are being held, in Dover during the New Hampshire Immigrant Solidarity Walk for Justice organized by Granite State and the New Hampshire council of Churches. - AFP

CALIFORNIA:
President Donald Trump's administration on Monday asked the US Supreme Court to
lift a court order preventing the government from fully enforcing a new rule
that would curtail asylum applications by immigrants at the US-Mexico border.
California-based US District Judge Jon Tigar last month issued a nationwide
injunction blocking the rule, which requires most immigrants who want asylum to
first seek safe haven in a third country they had traveled through on their way
to the United States.

The San
Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Aug. 16 upheld Tigar's
injunction but limited it to the nine Western states over which it is has
jurisdiction. Only two of those nine, California and Arizona, are on the border
with Mexico. That left open the possibility that the rule could be applied in
the two other border states, Texas and New Mexico.

The rule,
unveiled on July 15, would bar almost all immigrants from applying for asylum
at the southern border. It represents the latest effort by Trump's
administration to crack down on immigration, a signature issue during his
presidency and his 2020 re-election bid. One of the Republican president's main
objectives has been to reduce the number of asylum claims primarily by Central
American migrants who have crossed the US-Mexico border in large numbers during
his presidency.

The rule drew
legal challenges including from a coalition of groups represented by the
American Civil Liberties Union. In the administration's request to fully
enforce the rule, US Solicitor General Noel Francisco asked the Supreme Court
to issue a stay blocking the injunction while litigation over the issue
proceeds because the judge's order interferes with the government's authority
to establish immigration policy.

The
administration said the rule screens out asylum claims that are unlikely to
succeed and "deters aliens without a genuine need for asylum from making
the arduous and potentially dangerous journey from Central America to the
United States." The Supreme Court last December rebuffed a bid by the
administration to implement a separate policy prohibiting asylum for people
crossing the US-Mexican border outside of an official port of entry, with
conservative Chief Justice John Roberts joining the four liberal justices in
denying the request.- Reuters