Could it be, by some miracle, that anti-Trump judges are recognizing that their hijacking of immigration policy is contributing to the mess at the U.S.-Mexico border? That’s the hopeful way to read the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision late Tuesday to stay a district court injunction against the Trump Administration for returning asylum applicants to Mexico while they await a hearing.

Amid a deluge of migrants, the Department of Homeland Security in January invoked a provision of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 that allows an alien “who is arriving on land (whether or not at a designated port of arrival) from a foreign territory contiguous to the United States” to be returned to that territory while awaiting a hearing.

Asylum applicants are typically released into the U.S. where they may work for years until their claims are resolved, though many don’t show up for their hearing. By making migrants stay in Mexico, DHS aimed to relieve overburdened detention facilities and prevent Central Americans from exploiting U.S. asylum laws to obtain fast-track admission.

Federal Judge Richard Seeborg, an Obama appointee, blocked the policy last month. He reasoned that the law’s contiguous-territory return provision could not be applied to migrants who the law says are eligible for “expedited removal,” as the plaintiffs claimed to be, even if they were placed in regular removal proceedings.

But the government doesn’t have the resources to expeditiously remove everyone eligible for expedited removal under the law, so in its discretion has chosen to process asylum applicants under regular procedures. The plaintiffs complained, and Judge Seeborg agreed, that DHS violated regulatory due process by effectively giving migrants more due process.