Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Donald Trump fires acting AG
Obama holdover had refused to back travel ban
The president removes Sally Yates after she ordered Justice Department lawyers to not defend immigration ban.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump fired Acting Attorney General Sally Yates on Monday evening, hours after she announced that she had ordered Justice Department lawyers to not defend challenges to a controversial immigration order temporarily banning entry by citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries and refugees from around the world into the United States.
In a statement, the White House press office said that Yates “has betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States.”
Trump named Dana Boente, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and an appointee by former President Barack Obama, to serve in her place.
Yates had declared in a memo Monday that, as the leader of the Justice Department, she must ensure the department’s position is both “legally defensible” and “consistent with this institution’s solemn obligation to always seek justice and stand for what is right.”
“At present, I am not convinced that the defense of the Executive Order is consistent with these responsibilities nor am I convinced that the Executive Order is lawful,” Yates wrote. She wrote that “for as long as I am the Acting Attorney General, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defense of the Executive Order, unless and until I become convinced that it is appropriate to do so.”
Yates’ view was perhaps unsurprising; she was second-in-command at the Justice Department under Obama, held over until a new attorney general can be confirmed. Still, her announcement was remarkable for its defiance.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote Tuesday on Trump’s pick for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., whose views align much more closely with the president’s. Meanwhile, Trump continued on Monday to adamantly defend his order, despite mounting criticism, legal challenges and questions that stretched from Capitol Hill to the United Nations.
Trump’s order has sparked protests from coast to coast in cities and airports, court cases challenging its constitutionality, unease in cities worldwide and a host of questions about the limits of its scope. Even as the White House remained defiant, Obama became the latest high-profile voice to weigh in on the issue, offering his first public criticism of his successor while backing protesters.
The ban’s impact continued to reverberate around the world. The United Nations said that some 20,000 refugees could be affected by the 120-day suspension of refugee admission.
Lawyers sought to confirm how many people remain in custody in the U.S., while a lawsuit argued that dozens of people may have been forced to give up their green cards by Customs and Border Protection agents.
Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said the situation at airports remains “chaotic and fluid.” Lawyers are “having trouble independently verifying anything because the government will not provide full access to all the detainees,” he said.
Gelernt said that by Monday afternoon, no list of detainees had been turned over, adding that the ACLU could be back in court within a day to get the list.
White House officials have played down the anger and chaos over the order, holding a briefing with reporters Sunday evening to argue that the rollout was “a massive success story.”
On Monday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer defended the ban and its implementation.
“You don’t know when the next attack’s coming,” he said. “And so the best you can do is to get ahead of it because if you wait, you’re going to be reacting. And what I think I want to be clear on is the president’s not going wait.”
In his now-customary morning tweets, Trump blamed others for the disorganized implementation and sought to minimize its impact on travelers.
Trump said that “big problems at airports” were caused by the demonstrators themselves, Delta Airline’s technical problems that forced the cancellation of about 150 flights — which occurred about 48 hours after the immigration order was signed — and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who teared up while discussing the ban.
“Only 109 people out of 325,000 were detained and held for questioning,” Trump tweeted. “Big problems at airports were caused by Delta computer outage . ... protesters and the tears of Senator Schumer.”
On Capitol Hill, Democrats sought to capitalize on the growing public outcry and said they were hoping to pass legislation rescinding the ban. Some Republicans have also spoken out against the ban, including Sens. Lindsey Graham, S.C., and John McCain, Ariz., top defense hawks who issued a joint statement bluntly worrying that the order could “become a self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism.”
Criticism also emerged in other quarters. State Department diplomats have been circulating a document objecting to Trump’s order since he announced it Friday.