Pasadena, California - A circuit court of appeals in California on Thursday overturned an injunction that effectively blocked President Donald Trump from indefinitely halting refugee admissions into the US.

The ruling was handed down by a California-based three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals and overturned a series of injunctions issued by Seattle Judge Jamal Whitehead last year.

In May, Whitehead ordered the Trump administration to admit 12,000 refugees into the US who had been blocked from travel by a newly introduced policy.

The move came after Whitehead, in February, granted a preliminary injunction blocking Trump's suspension on the basis that it violated the 1980 Refugee Act.

On Thursday, the California court overturned several of Whitehead's injunctions because Congress had granted the president sweeping powers to suspend the entry of refugees and migrants into the country.

Senior US Circuit Judge Jay Bybee wrote on Thursday that the court understood the true extent of the "enormous practical implications" of the decision.

"There are over one hundred thousand ​vetted and conditionally approved refugees, many of whom may have spent years completing the USRAP process in a third ​country only to be turned away on the tarmac," he wrote.

Bybee effectively argued that Congress had forced the court's decision and stated that "whether that consequence reflects prudent policy is not a question for this court."

In response to the ruling, Attorney General Pam Bondi's Department of Justice took a victory lap, hailing the decision as a victory for the Trump administration and launching an attack on the judiciary.

According to a DOJ spokesperson cited by Reuters, the ruling "reaffirms that activist district court judges cannot usurp the power of the president to protect the American people ​and set refugee policy."