Trump’s scaled-down travel ban could still spark court battles
Ascaled-backversionofpresident Donald Trump’s US travel ban has come into force, stripped of provisions that brought protests and chaos at airports worldwide in January yet still likely to generate a new round of court fights.
The new rules, the product of months of legal wrangling, aren’t so much an outright ban as a tightening of alreadytough visa policies affecting citizens from six Muslimmajority countries travelling to the US. Refugees are covered, too.
Administration officials promised that implementation this time, which came into force on Thursday, would be orderly. US customs and border protection spokesman Dan Hetlage expected “business as usual at our ports of entry”, with all valid visa holders still being able to travel.
Still, immigration and refugee advocates are vowing to challenge the new requirements and the administration has struggled to explain how the rules will make the US safer.
In Iran, foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif denounced the partial reinstatement of the travel ban as a “truly shameful exhibition of blind hostility to all Iranians” – and argued that the measure will prevent Iranian grandmothers from seeing their grandchildren in America.
Under the temporary rules, citizens of Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Iran and Yemen who already have visas will be allowed into the US. But people from those countries who want new visas will now have to prove a close family relationship or an existing relationship with an entity like a school or business in the US.
It is unclear how significantly the rules will affect travel. In most of the relevant countries, few people have the means for leisure travel. Those that do already face intensive screenings before being issued visas.
Nevertheless, human rights groups prepared for new legal battles. The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups challenging the ban, called the new criteria “extremely restrictive” and “arbitrary” in their exclusions and designed to “disparage and condemn Muslims”.
The state of Hawaii filed an emergency motion on Thursday asking a federal judge to clarify that the administration cannot enforce the ban against relatives – such as grandparents, aunts or uncles – not included in the State Department’s definition of “bona fide” personal relationships.
Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer said he felt things would go smoothly. “For tonight, I’m anticipating few issues because, I think, there’s better preparation,” he said.
Much of the confusion in January, when Mr Trump’s first ban took effect, resulted from travelers with visas being kept off flights or barred entry on arrival in the US. Immigration officials were instructed onthursday not to block anyone with valid travel documents and otherwise eligible to visit the US.
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