Trump travel ban back in US courts next week as battles stretch on

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO: Legal challenges to President Donald Trump’s temporary travel ban on people from some Muslimmajority countries heat up again next week when two US appeals courts consider whether it is constitutional.

The legal fights may end up at the US Supreme Court perhaps in the fall, many months after Trump first issued an executive order in January saying there was an urgent need to halt some immigration to the United States for 90 days while officials reviewed the visa process.

Trump dropped the original travel order after unfavorable legal rulings and replaced it with a more limited ban which is itself now being challenged in appeals courts on two coasts.

Arguing that the United States needed to tighten national security measures, Trump’s attempt to limit travel was one of his first major acts in office. The fate of the ban is one indication of whether the Republican can carry out his promises to be tough on immigration and national security.

Omar Jadwat, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, who will be arguing the case at the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia, said the fact that so much time has passed since the ban was issued is proof that there was no pressing national security need for it in the first place.

The court fight will give those challenging the order an opportunity to argue that the government never intended for the travel pause to be temporary, said Buzz Frahn, an attorney at Simpson Thacher Bartlett in Palo Alto, California.

Now almost 100 days after the original travel ban, the government says the period of 90 days was reset when the administration issued the new order in March.

The Department of Homeland Security “is, and will be, continuously examining ways to enhance the screening and vetting process to shut down terrorist and criminal pathways into the United States,” agency spokesman David Lapan said. — Reuters