Trump travel ban partly reinstated
PEOPLE WHO LACK ANY BONA FIDE RELATIONSHIP WITH A PERSON OR ENTITY IN US WILL BE BARRED
TUS Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to go forward with a limited version of its ban on travel from six Muslim majority countries, a victory for President Donald Trump in the biggest legal controversy of his young presidency.
The justices will hear full arguments on October 2 in the case. The court yesterday said that Trump’s ban on visitors from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen can be enforced if those people lack a “credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”
But what counts as a bona fide relationship — or even whether existing visa holders are secure — may force lower-court judges to again weigh in on the immigration fight before a final ruling from the Supreme Court on the legality of Trump’s travel ban.
“How individuals will prove such a relationship, and whether the burden of proof will be on the government or the individuals seeking entry, remains to be seen,” Cornell University Law School professor Stephen Yale-Loehr said. “I predict chaos at the border and new lawsuits as foreign nationals and refugees argue that they are entitled to enter the US.”
The US Supreme Court yesterday partially reinstated President Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban targeting citizens from six predominantly Muslim countries, before examining the case in full this winter.
The Trump administration’s ban — put on hold by lower court rulings — can be enforced for travellers from the targeted countries “who lack any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States,” until the court hears the case in October, the justices ruled.
The court tempered its ruling by saying the ban could not be implemented for now against people who have personal links to the US, citing the examples of foreign nationals wishing to visit family or students accepted to attend a university.
But the Supreme Court’s decision nonetheless marks a win for the Republican leader, who has insisted the ban is necessary for national security, despite criticism that it singles out Muslims in violation of the US constitution.
Boost for Trump
Trump had suffered a series of stinging judicial setbacks over the ban, with two federal appeals courts maintaining injunctions on it.
Those courts had argued the president had overstepped his authority, and that his executive order discriminated against travellers based on their nationality.
Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project who argued one of the appellate cases brought against the ban, said he hoped the court’s decision would mark a step towards ending an “indefensible and discriminatory ban.” “The Supreme Court now has a chance to permanently strike it down,” Jadwat said.
Trump’s revised measure, announced in March, seeks to bar from US entry travellers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days, as well as suspend the entry of refugees for 120 days.
The original measure, issued by executive order in January and almost immediately blocked by the courts, also included Iraq on the list of targeted countries and had imposed an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees.
In an ruling earlier, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said that “immigration, even for the president, is not a one-person show.”
The Supreme Court narrowed the scope of the injunctions on the ban, saying the government could enforce its measure against “foreign nationals unconnected to the United States” without causing injury to the parties who filed suit.