SACRAMENTO, United States, July 2 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. federal judge on Wednesday blocked President Donald Trump's latest effort to shut the nation's asylum door, ruling that the White House overstepped both Congress's immigration statutes and the Constitution.

In a 128-page opinion, Judge Randolph D. Moss of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that Trump's January proclamation, which branded the rise in border crossings as an "invasion" and tried to create "an alternative immigration system," bypassed the protections Congress built into the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act.

Since the proclamation would have denied humanitarian screenings to people entering between ports of entry as well as at official crossings, the court found it "fundamentally irreconcilable" with the statutory text guaranteeing anyone on U.S. soil a chance to seek refuge, he said.

He dismissed the administration's reliance on emergency powers under Section 1182(f) of the federal immigration law, saying that the provision authorizes a president to keep certain non-citizens outside the country but does not let the executive erase asylum outright.

Moss's decision applied nationwide, but he delayed enforcement for 14 days to give the Justice Department time to appeal. Should the opinion stand, the government must resume processing all asylum requests filed after the proclamation took effect.

Wednesday's ruling echoed earlier defeats for categorical asylum bans. In 2018 and 2020, federal courts blocked two previous Trump administration orders that sought to disqualify people who crossed the border irregularly. ■