Travel ruling a blow to locals with family members abroad
Impact expected to be especially great in Central Ohio.
Mohamad COLUMBUS —
Zakzok went through what he called “extreme vetting” for 18 months in Turkey before he joined his parents and three younger siblings in Hilliard in November.
But the 22-year-old Syrian man now knows his older sister, Turkie “Rahaf ” Zakzok, 25, is “banned indefinitely” from joining her family in the United States.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld President Donald Trump’s travel ban blocking nationals from five mostly Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S., but even before that, Zakzok felt powerless in his efforts. Now, he doesn’t know what he’ll say to his sister about the decision.
“My sister has always been my backbone while I was in Turkey, and I have always been hers. This (separation) has left both of us crippled,” he said.
The 5-4 decision, announced by Chief Justice John Roberts, confirmed Trump’s power to stop immigration from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. The nation’s highest court rejected claims that the ban was motivated by religious hostility, as the Muslim religion is the majority in the five countries. (North Korea and Venezuela also are part of the ban.)
“The (order) is expressly premised on legitimate purposes: preventing entry of nationals who cannot be adequately vetted and inducing other nations to improve their practices,” Roberts wrote. “The text says nothing about religion.”
But Roberts did not endorse Trump’s statements about immigration in general or Muslims in particular, including his campaign call for “a complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
“We express no view on the soundness of the policy,” Roberts wrote.
Issued in September, the executive order — which is the third version of the travel ban introduced by Trump when he took office in January 2017 — was challenged by the state of Hawaii, the Muslim Association of Hawaii and three people affected by the ban. The case is one of many lawsuits lodged against Trump and his executive orders banning travel.
Advocates of immigrants said the ruling will result in thousands of immigrant families in the U.S. being separated from their loved ones abroad and contribute to a rising level of Islamophobia. The impact will be especially great in central Ohio, they said, because of the region’s more than 40,000 Somali refugees who have been resettled here.
“This decision treats certain people as undesirables and unwelcome because of the place they were born and the religion they practice,” said Angie Plummer, executive director of Community Refugee & Immigration Services in Columbus, one of two resettlement agencies in the area. “They’re obviously being selectively marginalized. It makes me angry that our government is treating people this way.”
Trump called the ruling vindication.
“Today’s Supreme Court ruling is a tremendous victory for the American people and the Constitution,” he said in a statement.
Speaking in the Cabinet Room during a luncheon with Republican members of Congress, Trump said the ruling shows that attacks by the media and Democrats regarding the policy “turned out to be very wrong,” adding that Republicans want “strong borders, no crime.”
Romin Iqbal, legal director for the Columbus chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Trump’s comments were “gloating over families that are continuing to be separated.” He added that the White House hasn’t been able to show how the ban will enhance security.
Critics also said Trump’s executive order wasn’t about crime but was a veiled attempt to keep Muslims out of the country. The two countries in the ban that don’t have Muslim majorities — North Korea and Venezuela — have only small numbers of people who want to enter the U.S., they said.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, admonished her Supreme Court colleagues on the right in a striking dissent.
“Ultimately, what began as a policy explicitly ‘calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States’ has since morphed into a ‘Proclamation’ putatively based on national-security concerns,” she said.
“But this new window dressing cannot conceal an unassailable fact: The words of the president and his advisers create the strong perception that the Proclamation is contaminated by impermissible discriminatory animus against Islam and its followers.”
Sotomayor compared the case to Korematsu v. U.S., a case that produced a 1944 Supreme Court ruling affirming the use of Japanese internment camps during World War II.
Trump’s first two bans expired in 2017. The latest version, which was affirmed Tuesday, has been in place since December.