Trump ban loses first legal battle
new york — US airports braced for fresh protests on Sunday against Donald Trump’s temporary immigration ban, which a federal judge partially blocked by ordering authorities not to deport refugees and other travellers detained at US borders.
The ruling coincided with a wave of anger and concern abroad, including among US allies, and rallies at major airports across the United States.
“Victory !!!!!! ” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which had sued the government, tweeted after US District Judge Ann Donnelly in New York issued an emergency stay.
“Our courts today worked as they should as bulwarks against government abuse or unconstitutional policies and orders,” the ACLU said.
But the ruling, which did not touch on the constitutionality of Trump’s order, did not quiet protestors at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport, where thousands had gathered.
“People are prepared to stand against this” said David Gaddis.
“It’s not surprising that people are mobilising,” the 43-year-old said. “Every day he’s in office, it’s a national emergency.”
Mass protests also broke out at major airports, including Washington, Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Dallas.
Trump’s executive order, signed on Friday, suspends the arrival of refugees for at least 120 days and bars visas for travellers from seven Muslim majority countries for the next three months.
The exact number of those affected is unclear, but Donnelly ordered the government to provide lists of all those detained at US airports since the measure went into effect.
Sending those travellers back to their home countries following Trump’s order exposes them to “substantial and irreparable injury,” she wrote in her decision.
A second federal judge in Virginia also issued a temporary order restricting immigration authorities for seven days from deporting legal permanent residents detained at Dulles Airport just outside Washington.
The ACLU’s legal challenge sought the release of two Iraqi men on grounds of unlawful detention.
One of them — Hameed Khalid Darweesh, who has worked as interpreter and in other roles for the US in Iraq — was released on Saturday after being detained the day before.
The List Project, which helps Iraqis whose personal safety is threatened because they have worked for the United States, was outraged over Darweesh’s detention, warning it put American lives at risk too. “
I can’t say this in blunt-enough terms: you can’t screw over the people that risked their lives and bled for this country without conottawa sequences,” wrote the project’s founder and director Kirk Johnson. Trump’s order follows through on one of his most controversial campaign promises, to subject travellers from Muslim countries to “extreme vetting” — which he declared would make America safe from “radical Islamic terrorists.”
The targeted countries are Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
“We knew that was coming — we were prepared,” said Camille Mackler, a lawyer who heads legal initiatives at the New York Immigration Coalition, one of the groups that quickly mounted the demonstration there.
“But we didn’t know when, and we couldn’t believe it would be immediate, that there’d be people in an airplane the moment the order was taking effect.”—
Donald Trump US President It’s working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over. We’re going to have a very, very strict ban and we’re going to have extreme vetting which we should have had in this country for many years