US judge lets in grandparents
ANOTHER BLOW TO PRESIDENT TRUMP Easing of travel ban restrictions opens door to more refugees into America.
President Donald Trump’s temporary ban on travellers from six Muslim-majority countries cannot stop grandparents and other relatives of United States citizens from entering the country, a US judge said this week.
The ruling by US District Judge Derrick Watson in Honolulu also opens the door for more refugees and deals Trump a fresh courtroom defeat in a long back-andforth over an executive order that has gone all the way to the US Supreme Court.
The state of Hawaii had asked Watson to narrowly interpret a Supreme Court ruling that revived parts of Trump’s March 6 executive order banning travellers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days, as well as refugees for 120 days.
The Supreme Court said last month the ban could take effect, but that anyone from the six countries with a “bona fide relationship” to a US person or entity could not be barred. The Trump administration interpreted that opinion to allow spouses, parents, children, fiancees and siblings into the country, but barred grandparents and other family members.
Watson harshly criticised the government’s definition of close family relations in a ruling that changes the way the ban can now be implemented. “Common sense, for instance, dictates that close family members be defined to include grandparents,” he wrote.
Trump’s order is a pretext for illegal discrimination, Hawaii Attorney-General Douglas Chin said. Hawaii and refugee groups also had argued that resettlement agencies have a “bona fide” relationship with the refugees they help. Watson said the assurance by a resettlement agency to provide basic services to a refugee constitutes an adequate connection to the US.
The justice department said its rules were properly grounded in immigration law. –