U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar, Northern District of California (Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM)

A federal judge in San Francisco is poised to extend an injunction blocking the Trump administration rule barring asylum for migrants crossing the southern border outside of designated ports of entry.

Judge Jon Tigar, who last month issued a temporary restraining order blocking the rules, noted at a hearing Wednesday morning that his ruling in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California had already been reviewed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Earlier this month, the Ninth Circuit largely upheld Tigar's ruling in an opinion by Judge Jay Bybee, which called the move an “end run around Congress.”

“Almost all the questions that are before the court this morning have already been resolved twice,” Tigar said. “I'm not allowed to disagree with the Ninth Circuit,” Tigar noted, adding that he was “unlikely” to disagree with himself. 

Nonprofit groups filed suit last month following a proclamation from President Donald Trump and an interim final rule from acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen barring asylum for people crossing the southern U.S. border outside of designated ports of entry. Tigar, however, previously found that new rule “irreconcilably conflicts with the INA and the expressed intent of Congress.”

“Whatever the scope of the president's authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,”  Tigar wrote in his order.

Tigar opened Wednesday's hearing by telling the government's lead lawyer, DOJ Civil Division Deputy Assistant Attorney General Scott Stewart, that he found the government's position on the scope of the injunction impractical. The government had proposed that any injunction applies only to actual clients of the four non-profit group plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

“If I were to adopt the government's view,” Tigar said, “that would make them the most popular legal aid agencies at the border.”

The temporary restraining order Tigar issued on Nov. 19 is set to expire at midnight on Wednesday. Tigar said he hoped to have an order out on the matter before that time.