Due to the processing delays, the program had not offered relief for those who faced the threat of immediate danger, yet at the level of the individual families it had made it less attractive to bring children illegally, as there was the prospect of legal entry. On July 15, 2019, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice announced an Interim Final Rule to take effect on July 16 that would rule foreigners who cross the US–Mexico border ineligible for asylum if they had not previously applied for asylum in countries they had traveled through, effectively barring asylum claims on the border from nationals of Central America and Cuba. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) promised to immediately challenge the rule in court. On July 24, 2019, judge Timothy Kelly of the DC District Court upheld the new rule, but that same day judge Jon Tigar of the Northern California District Court issued a preliminary injunction against the rule, halting its implementation until the legal matters could be resolved. After some back-and-forth rulings on whether this hold applied nation-wide, the Supreme Court struck down the hold on September 11, while the court challenge to the policy continues. From July to October 2017, the Trump administration ran what the DHS called a "pilot program" for zero tolerance in El Paso. Families were separated, including families that were seeking asylum, and children were then reclassified as "unaccompanied" and sent into a network of shelters with no system created to reunite them with their parents. The existence of this early "pilot program" first became widely known in June 2018, with reporting by NBC News from information provided by DHS. In May 2018, NPR spoke with a director at The Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights, an agency that advocates for the children's best interests. Asked if staff had noticed an increase in children coming in with parents and then separated from them at the border, the director told NPR, "We noticed as early as late spring of 2017, and through the winter and now the spring of this year, we have seen a significant number of children referred to us for the appointment of a child advocate for kids taken from their parents at the border." According to an April 2018 memo obtained by "The Washington Post", the government viewed the El Paso experiment as successful in that it showed a 64 percent drop in apprehensions while apprehensions began to rise in October when it was paused. According to a Border Patrol report on the initiative, the El Paso sector processed approximately 1,800 individuals in families and 281 individuals in families were separated under this initiative.