AP – Strong storms, including at least one tornado, swept through parts of the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic region, damaging homes and businesses and causing injuries after storms in the South killed at least eight people.

Storms that hit Ohio on Sunday and moved into New Jersey overnight into Monday brought heavy rains, lightning, strong winds and, in Ohio, at least one tornado. The storms followed worse conditions that had swept across the South , unleashing more than a dozen confirmed tornadoes and flooding, killing at least eight people, injuring dozens and flattening much of a Texas town.

In Shelby, Ohio, the National Weather Service said a tornado touched down Sunday. No deaths were reported, but Richland County emergency officials said that about a half-dozen homes and businesses were damaged and that at least six people were injured in the city roughly 90 miles (145 kilometers) southwest of Cleveland.

The weather service says a possible tornado also swept through part of Clark County in western Ohio on Sunday, about 40 miles west of Columbus, and damaged some mobile homes. There were no immediate reports of injuries there.

Storms on Monday spawned a tornado watch and flooded roadways in some areas of New Jersey, causing a roof to collapse at an apartment complex in Camden, though no injuries were reported. The weather disrupted rail service in the mid-Atlantic region, caused delays at airports and left tens of thousands of utility customers without power.

More than 20,000 customers lost power in New Jersey when the storms hit, though crews were able to quickly restore service to most.

Vermont officials say flooding from spring rains closed a number of roads Monday. An emergency operations center has been activated to help communities respond to the flooding.

The weather service said Monday that a survey team found evidence of an EF-3 twister with winds of at least 136 mph near Weches, Texas, and that two other smaller tornadoes touched down in the same region on Saturday. Another EF-3 twister flattened part of Franklin, Texas.

The system moved eastward into Mississippi, where weather service teams have confirmed eight tornadoes. And at least three weak tornadoes struck Alabama on Sunday.  Four people were killed in Texas. The other victims died in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Trump administration asked an appeals court Friday to let it continue returning asylum seekers to Mexico, hours before a U.S. judge’s order was set to go into effect blocking the unprecedented change to the U.S. asylum process.

Judge Richard Seeborg’s ban was set to go into effect at 5 p.m. Pacific time, but the government has now asked an appeals court to keep the policy in place while it is litigated. It’s unclear when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would rule on the government’s request.

Either way, immigration attorneys who had argued the policy was putting the lives of asylum seekers at risk by forcing them to wait in violence-plagued Mexico said the ruling was already having an effect.

Since the judge issued his order, immigration officials stopped returning asylum seekers south of the border after they attended their hearings in the United States.

“I haven’t heard of anyone who’s been sent back since the judge’s order on Monday,” said American Civil Liberties Union attorney Judy Rabinovitz.

The order marked another defeat to President Donald Trump’s intent to radically alter U.S. immigration policies. Families seeking asylum typically have been released in the U.S. with notices to appear in court.

The new policy started in January at the nation’s busiest border crossing in San Diego and the government was starting to expand it.

At a hearing in El Paso, Texas, on Wednesday, Nicolas Palazzo, an attorney for Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, told a judge that his Salvadoran client feared returning to Mexico.

In similar cases in San Diego, Department of Homeland Security attorneys said authorities would interview the asylum seeker to determine if fears of Mexico were credible enough to avoid going back. But attorneys on Wednesday assured a judge that the man would remain in the United States, signaling a change ahead of Friday afternoon’s ban.

The Mexican government says more than 1,300 people were returned to Mexico under the program.

If the policy remains blocked, it’s unclear whether asylum seekers will have to wait until their next hearing date in U.S. courts to return to the United States, or if they will be allowed to simply appear at a border crossing before then, Rabinovitz said.

The order came after a lawsuit by 11 Central Americans and legal advocacy groups who argued the lives of asylum seekers were being put at risk by forcing them to stay in Mexico, where crime and drug violence are prevalent.

The judge agreed, saying the policy lacks sufficient protections to ensure migrants don’t face “undue risk to their lives or freedom.”

After the ruling, Trump tweeted that the ruling was “unfair to the U.S.”

The Trump administration says the policy responds to a crisis at the southern border that has overwhelmed the ability of immigration officials to detain migrants. Growing numbers of families are fleeing poverty and gang violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Attorneys representing asylum seekers say the government is ignoring the law to try and simply stop immigrants who have a legal right to be in the United States.

“These people are facing very serious dangers in Mexico — including the danger that they just might be sent back to their home country,” Rabinovitz said. “That’s not the way we should be treating asylum seekers. …. We’re glad the court is standing up to the Trump administration and saying ‘no, you’ve got to follow the law.’”

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Melley reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat in El Paso contributed to this report.