But now that policy has suffered a major setback in court. And the ruling is particularly notable for its harsh depiction of this program in all its naked cruelty.

The ruling in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s injunction on the policy, which is known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP. The underlying merits of the lawsuit, which was brought by asylum seekers who had returned to Mexico and groups representing them, still have to be litigated, but in blocking it, the court ruled that the plaintiffs would likely succeed on the merits.

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The most legally significant aspect of the ruling was the court’s finding that the policy — which is also known as “Remain in Mexico” — violated federal statutes that allow migrants to apply for asylum without getting removed.

Trump and his immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, have long argued that asylum seekers are gaming the system by not showing up for their hearings at backlogged courts, and disappearing into the interior instead. There are various ambitious proposals floating around to discourage such gaming and ease these backlogs without retreating on our international human rights obligations.

But the administration has instead largely preferred to handle this problem by making it as hard as possible to apply for asylum in the first place, or, in this case, to force asylum seekers to wait outside the country for hearings.

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Yet the court found that this is a violation of the law.

What’s particularly interesting is what the ruling did next. The court also found that MPP violates our obligations, codified in U.S. law, to international human rights treaties — specifically a value known as “non-refoulement,” or the prohibition against sending people back to countries where their lives or liberties will be threatened on account of political, racial, or other forms of persecution.

The MPP policy was designed with supposed safeguards designed to ferret out people who will face such threats, and exempt them from removal. But the court found those safeguards are insufficient — validating one of the main criticisms of the policy that had been brought by asylum workers and many others.

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And, in a stunning finding, the ruling concluded that there is a “significant likelihood that the individual plaintiffs will suffer irreparable harm if the MPP is not enjoined.”

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Why? Because “uncontested evidence in the record establishes that non-Mexicans returned to Mexico under the MPP risk substantial harm, even death.”

Uncontested evidence that the policy risks substantial harm, even death.

This, too, validates what studies and critics had claimed: that the policy is deeply cruel, because it subjects people who are already fleeing desperate situations, and are thus already deeply vulnerable, to still more horrors, including threats to their lives.

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To illustrate the point, the ruling quotes numerous migrants recounting their harrowing stories.

“The court explicitly said the Trump administration is putting asylum seekers at risk of dying,” immigration attorney David Leopold told me, adding that this illustrates that the ruling blocking the policy will “not only uphold the rule of law, but will save lives.”

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It’s unclear what happens now. The MPP policy appears to be on hold, but the administration is having all kinds of other successes in making it hard to apply for asylum. And the underlying merits still have to be litigated. The administration could appeal this injunction to the Supreme Court, where anything can happen.

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But for now, this ruling is a ringing validation of everything critics have been saying about the profound cruelty of this policy — and then some.