Tennessee AG supports travel ban

Tennessee’s attorney general is now among a coalition of officials from 15 states supporting President Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban.

On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris, R-Collierville, told reporters that Tennessee became one of the latest states to file an amicus brief with a federal appeals court in favor of Trump’s executive order.

The president’s revised order, which was issued in March, restricts travel from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen.

A federal judge in Hawaii halted Trump’s travel ban, which was his second. The federal judge’s ruling is being appealed in 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

At a campaign-style rally in Nashville on March 15, Trump said the federal judge’s ruling made the country “look weak.”

Last month, attorneys general from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and West Virginia, as well as Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, filed the amicus brief with the 9th Circuit. The states argue that Trump’s travel ban is legal.

North Dakota also joined the coalition of states that filed the amicus brief this week.

The coalition of states conclude that the appeals court should ultimately reverse the halt of the travel ban.

While discussing Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery’s legal filing, Norris pointed to the opening remarks included in the latest amicus brief, filed on Monday, which he said was a “very interesting sort of admission about the vetting process.”

“After multiple federal officials drew public attention to serious flaws in the preexisting vetting scheme for aliens residing abroad who wish to enter this country with visas or as refugees, the executive branch made a policy decision entrusted to it expressly by Congress: the executive temporarily suspended the admission of specified classes of aliens pursuant to its broad authority,” the legal filing states. “This executive order expressly identified a heightened national-security risk attendant to six countries that Congress and the Obama Administration had previously identified as ‘countries of concern’ under national-security-risk criteria.”

The states that have joined the case, including Tennessee, also argue in their latest filing that they have a “significant interest” in protecting their citizens while admitting that the states have “no authority to restrict or set the terms of aliens’ entry into the United States for public safety and national security reasons.”

Representatives for Slatery and Gov. Bill Haslam did not immediately respond to a request for comment.