A federal judge in Seattle on Saturday partially lifted a ban by the administration of US President Donald Trump on certain refugees, after two groups argued that the policy prevented people from some mostly Muslim countries from reuniting with family living legally in the US.
US District Judge James Robart on Thursday heard arguments in lawsuits from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Jewish Family Service, which said the ban causes irreparable harm and puts some people at risk.
US government lawyers argued that the ban is needed to protect national security.
Photo: AP
Robart ordered the federal government to process certain refugee applications, but said his directive did not apply to people without a “bona fide relationship” to a person or entity in the US.
Trump restarted the refugee program in October “with enhanced vetting capabilities.”
The day before his executive order, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, US Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke and Director of US National Intelligence Daniel Coats sent a memo to Trump saying certain refugees must be banned unless additional security measures are implemented.
It applies to the spouses and minor children of refugees who have already settled in the US, and suspends the refugee program for people coming from 11 countries, nine of which are mostly Muslim.
In his decision, Robart wrote that “former officials detailed concretely how the agency memo will harm the United States’ national security and foreign policy interests.”
Robart said his order restores refugee procedures in programs to what they were before the memo and added that this already includes very thorough vetting of individuals.
The ACLU argued the memo provided no evidence for why additional security was needed and did not specify a time frame for implementing the changes.
The process for imposing the policy violated a federal law, the groups said.
US Department of Justice attorney August Flentje told the judge that the ban is temporary and “is a reasonable and appropriate way for agency heads to tackle gaps” in the screening process.
The lawsuits from the two groups were consolidated and represent refugees who have been blocked from entering the country.
The ACLU represents a Somalian man living in Washington state who is trying to bring his family to the US.
They have gone through extensive vetting, have passed security and medical clearances, and just need travel papers, but those were denied after the ban.
ACLU of Washington staff attorney Lisa Nowlin said in a statement that they were happy for their client — “who has not yet had the opportunity to celebrate a single birthday with his younger son in person — will soon have the opportunity to hold his children, hug his wife in the very near future, and be together again as a family for the first time in four years.”
Two other refugees included in the Jewish Family Service lawsuit are former Iraqi interpreters for the US Army whose lives are at risk because of their service.
Another is a transgender woman in Egypt “living in such extremely dangerous circumstances that the US government itself had expedited her case until the ban came down,” said Mariko Hirose, a lawyer with the Jewish Family Service case.
Yet another is a single woman in Iraq, Hirose said.
Her husband divorced her after she was kidnapped and raped by militants because she worked with a US company.
Her family is in the US but she is stranded by the ban, Hirose said.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the