The US Department of Justice was yesterday scheduled to face off with opponents in a federal appeals court over the fate of US President Donald Trump’s temporary travel ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries, his most controversial act since taking office last month.
On Friday last week, US District Judge James Robart suspended Trump’s ban, opening a window for people from the seven affected countries to enter the country.
The San Francisco-based US Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit was scheduled to hear arguments over whether to restore the ban from department lawyers and opposing attorneys for the states of Minnesota and Washington at 3pm.
Photo: AFP
“The threat from radical Islamic terrorism is very real, just look at what is happening in Europe and the Middle-East. Courts must act fast!” Trump said on Twitter on Monday.
Trump has said the travel measures are designed to protect the US against the threat of terrorism.
He called Robart, appointed by former US president George W. Bush, a Republican, a “so-called judge.”
In a brief filed on Monday, the department said the suspension of Trump’s order was too broad and “at most” should be limited to people who were already granted entry to the country and were temporarily abroad, or to those who want to leave and return to the US.
Opponents say the 90-day ban — barring entry for citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen and imposing a 120-day halt to all refugees — is illegal.
The state of Washington argued that it has suffered harm, saying some students and faculty at state universities had been stranded overseas because of the ban.
Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order sparked protests and chaos at US and overseas airports in the weekend that followed.
All the people who carried out fatal attacks inspired by Muslim militancy in the US since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were US citizens or legal residents, the New America think tank said.
None came to the US or were from a family that emigrated from one of the countries listed in the travel ban, it said.
Trump faces an uphill battle in the liberal-leaning San Francisco court. Two members of a three-judge panel that is to hear the arguments were appointed by Democratic former US presidents Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, and one was appointed by Bush.
Appeals courts are generally leery of upending the “status quo,” which in this case is the lower court’s suspension of the ban.
Opponents of the ban received far more filings in support of their position than the department.
Washington state’s challenge was backed by about a dozen friends-of-the-court briefs submitted by at least 17 state attorneys general, more than 100 companies and about a dozen labor and civil rights organizations.
About a dozen conservative groups supported the government in three such briefs.
The appeals court was focusing on the narrow question of whether the district court had grounds to put the order on hold.
The bigger legal fight over whether Trump had authority to issue the order is to be addressed later in the litigation.
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