Seemingly every day, headlines report that another federal judge has imposed some injunction or restraining order on President Donald Trump and his administration. This time, a Biden-appointed judge has demanded that the Trump administration welcome over 10,000 supposed refugees into the U.S.

In late March, Judge Jamal Whitehead of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington issued a preliminary injunction barring the Trump administration from defunding the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), demanding instead that the administration accept some 40,000 noncitizens, most of whom were approved for entry under the Biden administration, into the country. Whitehead claimed that the administration’s canceling of contracts with refugee resettlement firms “likely constitutes arbitrary and capricious action…” He added, “Without immediate relief, refugees remain stranded abroad, families separated, and resettlement agencies shuttered.” Whitehead noted, “The Court recognizes that such relief is extraordinary but concludes it is necessary to prevent permanent damage and preserve the status quo while the parties litigate the merits of this lawsuit.”

Just a day later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit largely stayed Whitehead’s injunction from taking effect, observing that the U.S. Constitution and the statutes governing USRAP afford the president “ample power to impose entry restrictions in addition to those elsewhere enumerated in the” Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA). The appellate judges did, however, add that the Trump administration cannot prevent or bar the entry of “individuals who were conditionally approved for refugee status by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services before January 20, 2025.” The president’s executive order effectively shutting down USRAP “does not purport to revoke the refugee status of individuals who received that status under the United States Refugee Admissions Program prior to January 20, 2025,” the circuit court wrote.

But the circuit court did not define “conditional approval,” resulting in conflicting interpretations at the lower court level. Appellate judges Barry Silverman (appointed by former President Bill Clinton), Bridget Bade (appointed by Trump), and Ana de Alba (appointed by Biden) clarified that some interpretations of “conditional approval” were so broad as “to swallow the entire stay order.” The judges explained that they intended to include “refugees furthest along in the process,” not the estimated 130,000 who had been greenlit for travel to the U.S. under the Biden administration. “Our order was not intended to compel the government to admit more refugees than authorized for the entire Fiscal Year 2025,” the judges wrote.

Therefore, they clarified, their order only mandated accepting “refugees” who met three criteria prior to January 20. First, the individual’s refugee application must have been approved, authorizing U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to accept the individual as a refugee at a U.S. port of entry. Second, the individual must have been “cleared by USCIS for travel to the United States…” And third, the individual must have had “arranged and confirmable travel plans to the United States…”

At a subsequent district court hearing, Trump administration attorneys estimated that less than 200 individuals met those criteria and ought to be accepted, while attorneys representing refugees and refugee resettlement firms argued that “about 12,000” individuals qualified. The Trump administration argued that “arranged and confirmable travel plans” was a narrow enough qualifier that only 160 individuals ought to be admitted: those who were scheduled to depart for the U.S. within two weeks of January 20. Whitehead lambasted the administration’s reasoning in an order issued Monday. “It requires not just reading between the lines, but hallucinating new text that simply is not there,” he wrote of the administration’s interpretation of “arranged and confirmable travel plans.” The judge added, “This Court will not entertain the Government’s result-oriented rewriting of a judicial order that clearly says what it says.”

“The Government is free, of course, to seek further clarification from the Ninth Circuit. But the Government is not free to disobey statutory and constitutional law — and the direct orders of this Court and the Ninth Circuit — while it seeks such clarification,” Whitehead wrote. He then ordered the Trump administration to immediately begin processing, accepting, and resettling the roughly 12,000 “refugees” he deemed admissible under the circuit court’s criteria. “The Government’s obligation to process, admit, and provide statutorily mandated resettlement support services to the Injunction-Protected Refugees is immediate. Likewise, the Government’s obligation to restore funding, information, and operational support to its USRAP partners as necessary to process, admit, and provide resettlement services to these individuals is also immediate,” he concluded.

The Biden-appointed judge gave the Trump administration three weeks to usher the approximately 12,000 “refugees” identified by Whitehead into the U.S., including restoring or renewing travel clearances, and provide those 12,000 “refugees” with “initial housing, transportation, employment training and placement, English language training, cash and medical assistance, and case management support,” among other benefits.

Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) suggested that the Trump administration ask the Supreme Court to intervene in the case, quipping, “This is getting ridiculous.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff and immigration policy architect Stephen Miller commented simply, “Judicial coup.”