Justices reinstate travel directive
High court allows limited version of Trump’s ban
The Supreme Court is allowing President Donald Trump to forge ahead with a limited version of his ban on travel from six mostly Muslim countries to the U.S. Trump hailed the decision as a “victory for national security,” but it’s likely to set off a new round of court disputes over anti-terror efforts and religious discrimination.
The justices will hear full arguments in October in the case that has stirred heated emotions across the nation and pointed rebukes from lower courts saying the administration is targeting Muslims. Until then, the court said Monday, Trump’s ban on visitors from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen can be enforced if those visitors lack a “credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”
The ruling sets up a potential clash between the government and opponents of the ban over the strength of visitors’ ties to the United States. A senior official said plans already had been written to enforce the ban aggressively. But immigrant groups said relatively few people try to enter the United States without well-established ties.
The Supreme Court delivered a mixed ruling Monday that will allow President Trump to implement his travel ban against six Muslim majority nations — but only for visitors who lack ties to the United States.
The court ruled that Trump may bar people from six majority-Muslim countries — Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — if they have no “bona fide” relationship to the United States. Those who have established ties will be allowed to continue entering the country, which covers the majority of visitors from those countries.
More than 100,000 people legally entered the USA from the six countries in fiscal 2016, which ended last Sept. 30, according to State Department data.
Nearly 30,000 had immigrant visas, more than 25,000 arrived as refugees and thousands more came on student, diplomatic and research visas that require proof of a U.S. connection. All would be exempt from the ban under the court’s decision.
The ruling means officials at the Department of Homeland Security and State will have to begin sorting through each application submitted by travelers from the six targeted countries to determine whether they have enough of a link to the USA to enter.
The justices provided several examples to explain who may enter the country:
uIf American citizens claim close relatives from one of the targeted countries, they will be able to do so.
uIf U.S. universities have accepted students from one of the targeted countries, the students will be able to enter the USA and start their studies.
uIf a U.S. business has given a job to a worker from one of the targeted countries, the worker will be able to do that job.
“In practical terms, this means that (the executive order) may not be enforced against foreign nationals who have a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States,” the court wrote.
Two federal appeals courts had blocked the entire ban, one saying it violates constitutional protections for religion and the other saying it violates immigration law.
The Supreme Court said Trump’s order may have violated
The Supreme Court agreed Monday to let President Trump’s immigration travel ban go into effect for some travelers, reversing the actions of lower federal courts that had put the controversial policy completely on hold.
The court also agreed to hear the case involving travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries and international refugees in October, leaving open the chance that it could reverse Monday’s verdict if challengers can prove the ban is illegal or unconstitutional.
The justices’ action gives Trump a partial victory following a string of defeats from coast to coast, and he wasted no time applauding it.
“Today’s unanimous Supreme Court decision is a clear victory for our national security,” Trump said in a statement. “It allows the travel suspension for the six terror-prone countries and the refugee suspension to become largely effective.”
That was immediately contested by immigrant rights and civil liberties groups challenging the travel ban, who argued that most would-be travelers cannot be barred under the court’s compromise ruling. “The hope is that this really only impacts a very small number of people,” said Becca Heller, director of the International Refugee Assistance Project.
Of the more than 100,000 people who legally entered the U.S. from the six countries last year, most would have qualified to enter under the Supreme Court’s criteria, according to State Department data. Nearly 30,000 had immigrant visas, and more than 25,000 arrived as refugees matched up with non-profit groups or sponsor families.
Going forward, however, travelers in a wide range of visa categories will have to prove their connection to a U.S. organization or individual in order to avoid the ban — at least until the Supreme Court hears and decides the overall dispute.
“The government’s interest in enforcing (the ban), and the executive’s authority to do so, are undoubtedly at their peak when there is no tie between the foreign national and the United States,” the court said.
On the other hand, it said the ban “may not be enforced against foreign nationals who have a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”
SOME IN, SOME OUT
Until Monday, the travel ban had been under siege in federal courts. Some courts struck it down as a form of religious discrimination against Muslims. Others said it showed bias based on nationality and exceeded the president’s authority without a firm national security justification.
The high court’s action, therefore, represents a setback for immigration rights and civil liberties groups that had bottled up two executive orders through legal action, exacerbating the president’s battles with federal courts that began during the election campaign.
The court’s action was written without an author, but with a partial dissent from Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, who would have given Trump a complete victory by allowing the ban to apply to all travelers.
“The government has made a strong showing that it is likely to succeed on the merits — that is, that the judgments below will be reversed,” Thomas wrote. “The government has also established that failure to stay the injunctions will cause irreparable harm by interfering with its ‘compelling need to provide for the nation’s security.’ ”
The Supreme Court also upheld a lower court’s decision to allow the administration to finally begin a global review of vetting procedures used to screen foreign travelers. The White House has said that review was the most important component of Trump’s executive order, and that the travel ban was merely an effort to free resources to conduct the review.
The Department of Homeland Security said it officially began that review on June 19.
The court’s action isn’t expected to set off the kind of chaos seen around the world when Trump signed the first travel ban on Jan. 27. That executive order, which went into effect immediately, barred all travelers from seven countries from entering the U.S. even if they had green cards, valid visas or refugee status. It led to at least 746 people temporarily detained at U.S. airports, some being deported back to their home countries, and untold numbers of others prevented from boarding their flights at airports overseas.
The revised travel ban, with the court’s limitations, cannot go into effect before Thursday at the earliest, based on a memorandum recently signed by the president.
A CHAOTIC HISTORY
From the beginning, the travel ban has led to chaos at U.S. airports and courthouses across the country.
Because visa and green card holders were included in the first ban, it immediately produced confusion and protests at U.S. airports. Within days, federal judges in New York and Boston intervened, and a third federal judge in Seattle issued a nationwide injunction in early February.
Trump unveiled a revised order in March that smoothed out some of the original ban’s rougher edges and narrowed the list of countries to include Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. It called for a 90-day ban on travelers from six countries and 120 days for refugees, but excluded visa and green card holders, deleted a section that gave preference to Christian minorities, and included a waiver process for those claiming undue hardship.
That order was blocked by a federal judge in Hawaii hours before it was to go into effect on March 16, as well as by another federal judge in Maryland. The Justice Department appealed both rulings, leading to similar slap-downs by federal appeals courts in Richmond May 25 and San Francisco June 12.
As it reached the Supreme Court, the travel ban had been struck down on both constitutional and statutory grounds. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled 10-3 that it discriminated against Muslims by targeting only countries with large Muslim majorities. But a threejudge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled unanimously that the ban violated federal immigration law by targeting people from certain countries without improving national security.