US travel ban begins with lawyers on hand
Lawyers and rights activists took up positions at major US airports as a weakened version of President Donald Trump’s travel ban took effect on Thursday evening.
But there were no signs of the chaos that erupted when the first version of the restriction, derided as discriminatory against Muslims, was abruptly imposed back in January.
Attorneys working pro-bono set up makeshift, just-in-case legal aid stations — some with signs in Arabic — at airports serving New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington and other cities, news reports said.
Protesters angry over the immigration policies also turned out, with some in Los Angeles holding placards denouncing Trump as a fascist.
But the first hours of the new version of the ban, as allowed by the Supreme Court, appeared to unfold calmly. Gone were the dramatic scenes of people arriving from seven mainly Muslim countries being detained and questioned for hours.
“We’re not really expecting any issues at the airport. But we’re here just in case, to monitor, to tell people what’s going on, and to report back what we’re seeing,” Camille Mackler, director of legal initiatives at the New York Immigration Coalition, told The Daily Beast.
The Trump administration says the temporary ban is necessary to keep terrorists out of the country, but immigrant advocates charge that it illegally singles out Muslims.
Under a Supreme Court ruling this week that allowed part of the ban to take effect -- and ended, for now, five months of skirmishes in lower courts -- the 90-day ban on visitors from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, and a 120-day ban on refugees, will allow exceptions for people with “close family relationships” in the US. Activists say the government has defined that too narrowly, excluding relationships with grandparents and grandchildren, aunts and uncles.