Court says Trump can enforce ban

The Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to fully enforce a ban on travel to the United States by residents of six mostly Muslim countries, even as legal challenges make their way through the courts.

THE US Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to fully enforce a ban on travel to the United States by residents of six mostly Muslim countries.

The justices, with two dissenting votes, said yesterday that the policy could take full effect even as legal challenges against it make their way through the courts.

The action suggests the high court could uphold the latest version of the ban that US President Donald Trump announced in September.

The ban applies to travellers from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

Lower courts had said people from those nations with a claim of a “bona fide” relationship with someone in the United States could not be kept out of the country.

Grandparents, cousins and other relatives were among those the courts said could not be excluded.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor would have left the lower court orders in place.

The San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals and the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, will be holding arguments on the legality of the ban this week.

Both courts are dealing with the issue on an accelerated basis, and the Supreme Court noted it expected those courts to reach decisions “with appropriate dispatch”.

Quick resolution by appellate courts would allow the Supreme Court to hear and decide the issue this term, by the end of June.

The president’s travel bans have each been frustrated by the courts to some degree.

In January, he signed an order banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries and suspending all refugee entry. The measure prompted protests and legal challenges across dozens of states

A revised version in March exempted green card-holders and dual citizens.

By June, the Supreme Court allowed most of it to go into effect, a including 120-day ban on all refugees entering the US, but granted a wide exemption for those with a “bona fide connection” to the US.

That was superseded by Mr Trump’s third order, announced in late September, which added non-Muslim-majority nations North Korea and Venezuela.

Although he moderated the ban when he became President, during campaign speeches he described it as a Muslim ban, something which caused problems when his ban was tested in the courts.

The Trump administration has maintained that the president has the authority to install travel bans in order to protect national security.

“The Constitution and acts of Congress confer on the President broad authority to prevent aliens abroad from entering this country when he deems it in the nation’s interest,” Solicitor General Noel Francisco argued in court papers. Francisco argued that the ban was necessary “in order to protect national security” and pointed out that the ban applied to some non-Muslim countries.