A federal judge in New York granted the American Civil Liberties Union’s request for a nationwide temporary injunction blocking the deportation of all people stranded in U.S. airports under President Trump’s new Muslim ban.
Four other courts also weighed in, each one a defeat for President Trump. The ACLU is involved in four of the five cases.
The ACLU-WA submitted a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the lawsuit filed in federal court by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Jan. 30 seeking to have key provisions of the President’s Executive Order on immigration declared unconstitutional.
The ACLU-WA joined ACLU affiliates in Montana and North Dakota to file a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request with the regional U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CPB) office to learn how Trump administration officials are interpreting and executing the president’s Muslim ban.
The filing is part of a coordinated effort from 50 ACLU affiliates, which filed 18 FOIAs with CBP field offices and its headquarters spanning over 55 international airports across the country.
Federal Judge James Robart in Seattle issued an order temporarily blocking President Donald Trump’s Muslim ban executive order nationwide.
“This ruling is another stinging rejection of President Trump’s unconstitutional Muslim ban,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “We will keep fighting to permanently dismantle this un-American executive order."
The ACLU-WA filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court in the Western District of Washington challenging President Trump’s ban on travel by people from seven Muslim-majority nations. The suit says the President’s Executive Order on immigration violates the Constitution as well as federal law.
The ACLU-WA is representing refugees and asylees who reside in Washington and have filed applications to reunify with their family members who have completed and cleared their final security screenings. Plaintiffs also include people who are Washington state residents here legally but who do not currently have a multiple entry visa. They are now trapped inside the country, unable to visit families in their home countries or carry out education-related travel for fear they will be unable to return to their lives here.
Also represented in the suit are two organizations: The Council on American-Islamic Relations-Washington (CAIR-WA), whose work has been greatly impacted by the Order’s violation of the First Amendment’s establishment of religion clause; and the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia, whose efforts to fulfill its religious mission of serving refugees have been severely harmed by the ban. The suit says the President’s Executive Order on immigration violates the Constitution as well as federal law.
Appeals court refused to reinstate Trump’s Muslim ban
ACLU-WA Legal Director Emily Chiang applauded the appeals court’s decision to leave in place the stay of the President’s Muslim travel ban.
“The unconstitutional ban violates American values and has taken a great toll on innocent individuals. It has ripped apart families in Washington state and around the country,” said Chiang. “Judicial review of actions by the executive branch is an essential part of our nation’s system to uphold the rule of law.”
Trump signs new Executive Order; ACLU vows to fight ‘Muslim Ban 2.0’
Trump’s new order exempts those who already have visas and green cards and removes Iraq from the banned countries, but it is still religious discrimination in the pretextual guise of national security, and is still unconstitutional, said ACLU Legal Director David Cole.
District Court judge in Hawaii blocks Trump’s second Muslim ban before it takes effect.
Also on March 15, in U.S District Court in Maryland, the ACLU and partner organizations asked that the ban be halted.
A federal court in Maryland blocked the new Executive Order’s 90-day ban on immigration from six Muslim-majority countries.
The Trump administration appealed the preliminary injunction blocking the central provision of President Trump’s second Muslim ban executive order that was entered by a federal court in Maryland.
Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and counsel for the plaintiffs in this case, had this reaction to the appeal: “President Trump’s Muslim ban has fared miserably in the courts, and for good reason — it violates fundamental provisions of our Constitution. We look forward to defending this careful and well-reasoned decision in the appeals court.”
Outcome of the case in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is still pending.
In the fall, the Supreme Court will hear arguments by the ACLU and partner organizations challenging the Trump’s Muslim ban.
This means the Muslim Ban 3.0 and the refugee ban are still in full effect.
“I am very happy that the judge recognized my right to have my family join me here in the United States, and I hope that they can come here as soon as possible,” said plaintiff Joseph Doe.
The judge’s order in the case Doe v. Trump enjoins the Trump Administration from enforcing a policy which would indefinitely prevent children and spouses of refugees from any country from being reunited with their refugee family members already admitted to the U.S.
The action came in the case Doe v. Trump, which the ACLU filed on February 7, 2017.
“I am overjoyed to see my wife and children and to be together as a family again,” said Doe. “I am so grateful that the judge recognized my right to have my family join me here in the United States.”
The ACLU has been counsel in successful challenges to all three versions of the ban, including one now pending before the Supreme Court.
This is because plaintiffs in Doe et al. v. Trump have an entirely separate legal claim to have their families reunited with them in the U.S. and those claims were not part of the challenge to the Muslim ban.
Of the Supreme Court’s decision on Muslim ban 3.0, Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said, “This ruling will go down in history as one of the Supreme Court’s great failures. It repeats the mistakes of the Korematsu decision upholding Japanese-American imprisonment and swallows wholesale government lawyers’ flimsy national security excuse for the ban instead of taking seriously the president’s own explanation for his action."
“It is ultimately the people of this country who will determine its character and future. The court failed today, and so the public is needed more than ever. We must make it crystal clear to our elected representatives: If you are not taking actions to rescind and dismantle Trump’s Muslim ban, you are not upholding this country’s most basic principles of freedom and equality.”
The settlement resolves two lawsuits that were consolidated, Doe et al. v. Trump et al., and Jewish Family Service of Seattle et al. v. Trump et al. The lawsuits, the first of which was filed by the ACLU of Washington and the law firm of Keller Rohrback L.L.P., challenged the refugee portion of President Trump’s series of Executive Orders banning certain populations from entering the United States, also known as the “Muslim Ban.” The ban prevented the immediate family members of refugees (known as “follow-to-join” refugees), as well as refugees from 11 countries, from entering the United States.