Trump may hit travel ban reset
New order would be narrower, easier to achieve, he says
WASHINGTON — Rebuffed again by the courts, President Donald Trump said Friday that he is weighing a new, more narrowly tailored executive order to curb entry into the U.S., a step that would mean setting aside his legal battle in favor of moving more quickly on his broader goal of restricting the flow of who comes into the country.
“We need speed for reasons of security,” the president told reporters as he traveled to Florida.
Trump said he might implement a “brand-new order” as early as next week. That step could effectively void his first executive order and end the court proceedings over it.
Trump insisted that he was confident his policy was on solid legal ground, a day after judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously refused to reinstate his temporary bans on travelers from seven majority-Muslim countries and on all refugees.
But he suggested that he was uninterested in a prolonged fight in court.
“We will win that battle,” Trump said. “The unfortunate part is that it takes time.”
The administration was weighing several options, chief of staff Reince Priebus said Friday at the White House, including asking the Supreme Court to lift the temporary restraining order on the travel bans that the 9th Circuit panel kept in place.
The new order under consideration would sus- President Donald Trump reassured Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday that the U.S. would defend its close ally. pend only refugee admissions and the issuance of new visas, according to an administration official familiar with the internal deliberations. Everyone who already was granted a visa or refugee status would be allowed to keep them.
The new directive would be intended to allay the chaos that erupted as a result of Trump’s Jan. 27 order, which blocked an estimated 60,000 people with valid visas, some while they were in midair and others who were removed from planes bound for the U.S. before takeoff.
The federal court rulings against Trump cited the rough implementation of the order in staying it.
In addition to temporary bans on entry by refugees and on all citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, the order Trump issued also indefinitely suspended the admission of Syrian refugees and gave preference to refugees who are members of persecuted religious minorities.
“We will not allow people into our country who are looking to do harm to our people. We will allow lots of people into our country that will love our people and do good for our country,” Trump said earlier Friday at a White House news conference alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
If Trump does decide to take the restraining order to the Supreme Court, he may undercut his objectives, legal experts warn, given the court’s 4-4 split between Republican and Democratic appointees.
“The government needs to take its medicine and withdraw the current executive order, substituting with one that clearly exempts (green card holders) and previously admitted non-immigrant visa holders like students and medical residents. Otherwise, the government is in a box,” said Peter Margulies, who teaches immigration law at Roger Williams Law School in Rhode Island.
But if the White House chooses to fight on, justices could take action that would effectively yield the same outcome as Trump rescinding the order, with a middleground ruling rather than an all-or-nothing decision.
The court could allow the ban to apply to thousands of foreigners who have obtained U.S. visas but have not yet used them, and not to green card holders, foreign students, doctors, technolo- gy company executives and tourists who were already living in the U.S. when the travel restrictions were announced.
Such a move could allow the high court to avoid a tie and a broader debate on the constitutionality of the ban.
Some immigration lawyers say a middle-ground ruling makes sense legally and practically.
“This would provide a balanced remedy that would relieve the chaos,” Margulies said.
Temple University law professor Peter Spiro agreed that if the case reached the high court, the justices might move toward narrowing the order, noting U.S. law gives more protection to people who are in this country, even if they were foreign citizens.
“From the administration’s perspective, a limited reinstatement would get them much of what it’s looking for: No new visas would be issued to nationals of the listed countries or to refugees,” he said.
Meanwhile, Trump also has revived claims of voter fraud, arguing in a lunch meeting Thursday that he and former Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte would have won in New Hampshire if not for voters bused in from out of state.
A GOP official with knowledge of the lunch conversation with senators described the president’s comments. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because it was a private meeting.