A court decision on US President Donald Trump’s travel ban has reopened a window for tens of thousands of refugees to enter the US, and the government is looking to quickly close it.
The administration late on Friday appealed directly to the US Supreme Court after a federal judge in Hawaii ordered it to allow in refugees formally working with a resettlement agency in the US.
US District Judge Derrick Watson also vastly expanded the list of US family relationships that refugees and visitors from six Muslim-majority countries can use to get into the country, including grandparents and grandchildren.
In its appeal, the US Department of Justice said Watson’s interpretation of the Supreme Court’s ruling on what family relationships qualify refugees and visitors from the six Muslim-majority countries to enter the US “empties the court’s decision of meaning, as it encompasses not just ‘close’ family members, but virtually all family members. Treating all of these relationships as ‘close familial relationship(s)’ reads the term ‘close’ out of the court’s decision.”
Only the Supreme Court can decide these issues surrounding the travel ban, the department said.
Watson’s ruling on Thursday was the latest twist in a long, tangled legal fight that is to culminate with arguments before the nation’s high court in October.
It could help more than 24,000 refugees who had already been vetted and approved by the US, but would have been barred by the 120-day freeze on refugee admissions, resettlement agency International Refugee Assistance Project director Becca Heller said.
“Many of them had already sold all of their belongings to start their new lives in safety,” she said. “This decision gives back hope to so many who would otherwise be stranded indefinitely.”
Citing a need to review its vetting process to ensure national security, the administration capped refugee admissions at 50,000 for the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, a ceiling it hit this week.
The federal budget can accommodate up to 75,000 refugees, but admissions have slowed under Trump, and the government could hold them to a trickle, resettlement agencies have said.
“Absolutely, this is good news for refugees, but there’s a lot of uncertainty,” resettlement agency HIAS spokeswoman Melanie Nezer said. “It’s really going to depend on how the administration reacts to this.”
US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the administration would ask the Supreme Court to weigh in, bypassing the San Francisco-based US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which has ruled against it in the case.
The Supreme Court allowed a scaled-back version of the travel ban to take effect last month.
The administration took a first step by filing a notice of appeal to the Ninth Circuit, allowing it to use a rule to petition the high court directly. There is no timetable for the Supreme Court to act, but the administration will be seeking quick action that clarifies the court’s opinion last month.
The justices are scattered during their summer recess, so any short-term action would come in written filings.
The administration has lost most legal challenges on the travel ban, which applies to citizens of Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Iran and Yemen.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS