Chaos spawned by Trump travel ban
Federal judge in NYC orders halt to deportations; 2nd judge issues stay
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump’s executive order suspending refugee arrivals and banning entry to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries spawned chaos and consternation across the globe Saturday, stranding unwitting travelers, prompting passionate debate over American values and igniting a fierce legal pushback that yielded early court victories for the president’s opponents.
The abrupt ban ensnared people from all walks of life who were caught in transit or expecting to soon return to the U.S. — not only refugees but students on a break from studies, business travelers and scientists, tourists and concert musicians, even the bereaved who had
gone home for funerals.
Of all the directives issued during a first jolting week of Trump’s presidency, it was this one that reverberated most powerfully in the outside world. Trump and his team insisted the order was not intended to target Islam and its followers, but the hashtag #muslimban trended, and many Muslims in America and abroad said they viewed the measure as a broadly conceived, stinging exclusion.
Capping a day of highstakes drama, a federal judge in New York, Ann M. Donnelly, ordered a halt to deportations of travelers who arrived at airports with valid visas to enter the U.S., saying that sending them back to the affected countries could cause them “irreparable harm.” But she did not rule on the legality of the executive order, nor did she say that others who have not yet arrived in the U.S. can be allowed to proceed.
“Clearly the judge understood the possibility for irreparable harm to hundreds of immigrants and lawful visitors to this country,” said ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero.
In a separate and more limited ruling, a federal judge in Virginia ordered a weeklong stay against removing people with permanent U.S. residency who had been detained under the presidential order at Washington’s Dulles airport.
As the directive’s effects spread, thousands staged spontaneous protests against refugee detention at airports across the country, including in Los Angeles and San Francisco. At New York’s John F. Kennedy airport, demonstrators waved signs and read from the famous Emma Lazarus poem inscribed in the Statue of Liberty.
At more than a dozen airports, including Los Angeles, Newark, Boston, Dallas, Chicago and Atlanta, immigration attorneys stepped up in droves to offer free services to those detained. “A lot of tears and emotion here,” said Hassan Ahmad, a lawyer from northern Virginia who hustled to Dulles airport.
The New York order appeared to affect the 100 to 200 people detained in transit to the United States. While the order will prevent them from being sent home, it was less clear whether they will have to remain in detention while their asylum cases are being decided.
One of the two detained Iraqis named in the case, Hameed Khalid Darwish, was an interpreter who had worked on behalf of the U.S. government. Freed after 19 hours in custody, he wept as he spoke to reporters, thanking supporters and calling America “the land of freedom, the land of rights.”
Groups bringing the legal challenge, who included the International Refugee Assistance Project and the National Immigration Law Center, said a separate motion sets the stage for a larger action involving other would-be refugees, visitors and immigrants stopped at other ports of entry.
Arab-American advocacy groups also were reacting to the new order, warning that it was disrupting travel all over the world.
“We see complete chaos in the way this has been implemented,” Abed A. Ayoub, legal and policy director for the AmericanArab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said.
The directive, he said, had caught up not only desperate refugees who had thought themselves within a hairsbreadth of safety, but many more with already established lives, homes and families in the United States. “This order needs to be rescinded,” he said.