Travel ban suits spread
LEGAL challenges to President Donald Trump’s first moves on immigration spread on Tuesday, with three states suing over his executive order banning travel into the United States by citizens of seven majorityMuslim countries.
Massachusetts, New York, Virginia and Washington state joined the legal battle against the travel ban, which the White House deems necessary to improve national security.
The challenges contend the order violated the US Constitution’s guarantees of religious freedom.
San Francisco became the first US city to sue to challenge a Trump directive to withhold federal money from US cities that have adopted sanctuary policies towards undocumented immigrants, which local officials argue help local police by making those immigrants more willing to report crimes.
The legal manoeuvres were the latest acts of defiance against executive orders signed by Trump last week that sparked a wave of protests in major US cities, where thousands of people decried the new president’s actions as discriminatory.
Both policies are in line with campaign promises by Republican businessman-turned-politician Trump, who vowed to build a wall on the Mexican border to stop illegal immigration and to take hard-line steps to prevent terrorist attacks in the United States.
The restrictions on the seven Muslim-majority countries and new limits on refugees have won the support of many Americans, with 49% of respondents to a Reuters poll conducted on Monday and Tuesday saying they agreed with the order, while 41% disagreed.
Massachusetts contended the restrictions run afoul of the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution, which prohibits religious preference.
“At bottom, what this is about is a violation of the Constitution,” Massachusetts Attorney-General Maura Healey said of the order halting travel by people with passports from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days. The order also barred resettlement of refugees for 120 days and indefinitely banned Syrian refugees.
“It discriminates against people because of their religion, it discriminates against people because of their country of origin,” Healey said at a Boston press conference.
Massachusetts will be backing a lawsuit filed over the weekend in Boston federal court by two Iranian men who teach at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.
A federal judge blocked the government from expelling those men from the country and halted enforcement of the order for seven days, following similar but more limited moves in four other states.
The attorneys-general of New York and Virginia also said their states were joining similar lawsuits filed in their respective federal courts challenging the ban.
“As we speak, there are students at our colleges and universities who are unable to return to Virginia,” Virginia attorney-general Mark Herring told reporters.
On Monday, Washington state became the first US state to have its attorney-general initiate a lawsuit against Trump to challenge the travel ban. — Reuters