Federal judge in Hawaii blocks Trump’s new travel ban

The people elected President Trump because he promised to enact these very policies. How is it some autocratic  leftwing judge in Hawaii  can undermine the will of the American people and issue a nationwide halt to the President’s urgently needed immigration order?

The job of a judge is to enforce the law (whether he likes it or not). It is not to make law, legislate or activate from the bench. Our enemies will exploit the actions of the enemies among us who care nothing of our security and only of their failed ideology.

This is who and what the left is. They refuse to accept plurality or the results of a fair and free election. They impose their will by edict. They have destroyed this country and we must fight with everything we have to get it back.

Federal judge in Hawaii blocks Trump’s new travel ban hours before implementation

US News, March 15, 2017:

A federal judge in Hawaii put a temporary nationwide halt to President Donald Trump’s new travel ban Wednesday, hours before it was set to take effect at 12:01 a.m.

The judge was one of three to hear arguments in separate cases across the country Wednesday over whether to block the ban on the eve of its implementation, but the court was the first to act nationwide to put it to a stop.

The travel restrictions, laid out in an executive order signed March 6, would suspend the U.S. refugee program for 120 days and largely stop travel from six majority-Muslim countries for 90 days.

Critics have said the measures amount to religious discrimination, and in Wednesday’s arguments lawyers challenging the ban referred multiple times to Trump’s repeated calls on the campaign trail for a “shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” until “our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

The president’s first travel ban, signed a week after Trump took office, was halted by a nationwide injunction issued by a federal court in Seattle on Feb. 3 and unanimously upheld by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco six days later.

Federal judge in Hawaii puts Trump travel ban on hold

By BEN NUCKOLS and GENE JOHNSON Associated Press

Hours before it was to take effect, President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban was put on hold Wednesday by a federal judge in Hawaii after hearing arguments that the executive order discriminates on the basis of nationality.

The ruling came as opponents renewed their legal challenges across the country, asking judges in three states to block the executive order that targets people from six predominantly Muslim countries.

More than half a dozen states are trying to stop the ban, and federal courts in Maryland, Washington state and Hawaii heard arguments about whether it should be put into practice early Thursday.

U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson decision prevents the executive order from going into effect, at least for now. Hawaii had requested a temporary restraining order.

Hawaii also argued that the ban would prevent residents from receiving visits from relatives in the six countries covered by the order. The state says the ban would harm its tourism industry and the ability to recruit foreign students and workers.

In Maryland, attorneys told a federal judge that the measure still discriminates against Muslims.

Government attorneys argued that the ban was revised substantially to address legal concerns, including the removal of an exemption for religious minorities from the affected countries.

“It doesn’t say anything about religion. It doesn’t draw any religious distinctions,” said Jeffrey Wall, who argued for the Justice Department.

Attorneys for the ACLU and other groups said that Trump’s statements on the campaign trail and statements from his advisers since he took office make clear that the intent of the ban is to ban Muslims. Trump policy adviser Stephen Miller has said the revised order was designed to have “the same basic policy outcome” as the first.

The new version of the ban details more of a national security rationale. It is narrower and eases some concerns about violating the due-process rights of travelers.

It applies only to new visas from Somalia, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya and Yemen and temporarily shuts down the U.S. refugee program. It does not apply to travelers who already have visas.

“Generally, courts defer on national security to the government,” said U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang. “Do I need to conclude that the national security purpose is a sham and false?”

In response, ACLU attorney Omar Jadwat pointed to Miller’s statement and said the government had put out misleading and contradictory information about whether banning travel from six specific countries would make the nation safer.

The Maryland lawsuit also argues that it’s against federal law for the Trump administration to reduce the number of refugees allowed into the United States this year by more than half, from 110,000 to 50,000. Attorneys argued that if that aspect of the ban takes effect, 60,000 people would be stranded in war-torn countries with nowhere else to go.

In the Hawaii case, the federal government said there was no need to issue an emergency restraining order because Hawaii officials offered only “generalized allegations” of harm.

Jeffrey Wall of the Office of the Solicitor General challenged Hawaii’s claim that the order violates due-process rights of Ismail Elshikh as a U.S. citizen who wants his mother-in-law to visit his family from Syria. He says courts have not extended due-process rights outside of a spousal relationship.

Neal Katyal, a Washington, D.C., attorney representing Hawaii, called the story of Elshiskh, an Egyptian immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen, “the story of America.”

Wall told the judge that if he is inclined to issue an injunction, it should be tailored specifically to Hawaii and not nationwide.

In Washington state, U.S. District Judge James Robart — who halted the original ban last month — heard arguments in a lawsuit brought by the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, which is making arguments similar to the ACLU’s in the Maryland case.

Robart said he is most interested in two questions presented by the group’s challenge to the ban: whether the ban violates federal immigration law, and whether the affected immigrants would be “irreparably harmed” should the ban go into effect.

He spent much of Wednesday afternoon’s hearing grilling the lawyers about two seeming conflicting federal laws on immigration — one which gives the president the authority to keep “any class of aliens” out of the country, and another that forbids the government from discriminating on the basis of nationality when it comes to issuing immigrant visas.

Robart said he would issue a written order, but he did not say when. He is also overseeing the challenge brought by Washington state.

Attorney General Bob Ferguson argues that the new order harms residents, universities and businesses, especially tech companies such as Washington state-based Microsoft and Amazon, which rely on foreign workers. California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Oregon have joined the claim.

Washington and Hawaii say the order also violates the First Amendment, which bars the government from favoring or disfavoring any religion. On that point, they say, the new ban is no different than the old. The states’ First Amendment claim has not been resolved.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reinstate the original ban but did not rule on the discrimination claim.