ACTION
Executive Order: Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States suspends visa issuance as well as immigration entry to “nationals of countries of particular concerns” for 90 days. The Trump administration applied this order to seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and Libya. The order also suspends all refugee admission to the US for 120 days and indefinitely denies entry to all Syrian refugees.
ANALYSIS
The legality of the executive order is open to debate. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, the US president has the right to suspend the entry of any immigrants he or she finds to “be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” But 13 years later, President Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which banned discrimination of immigrants because of their “race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence.” More than three dozen lawsuits have been filed since Trump signed his order Jan. 27. And the attorneys general of at least five states – Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Washington – joined lawsuits challenging its constitutionality. The order does not explicitly bar immigrants from these seven countries because they are Muslim. But if courts decide that Trump’s executive order is meant to act as a Muslim ban – which some of Trump’s spokesmen have publicly suggested – then the order may violate the Constitution’s Establishment clause.
But presidents are granted sweeping powers over immigration. “I think the administration could win,” Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell Law School, told CNN. “Courts tend to defer to whatever a president declares on immigration.”
UPDATE: On Feb. 3, a federal judge in Seattle issued a temporary restraining order against the ban, effectively blocking the initial executive order nationwide – an injunction that was later upheld by a three judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
On March 6, President Trump signed a revised travel ban executive order aimed at addressing legal issues raised by the courts. The new order no longer applies to travelers with US visas, and Iraq was removed from the list of seven countries issued a flat 90-day ban. It also explicitly states that green card holders are excluded from the ban, and Syrians are no longer singled out for indefinite exclusion. Finally, the new order no longer offers refugees who are religious minorities in those countries preferential status for resettlement – the item in the first order that effectively gave Christian refugees an advantage, which critics said made it unconstitutional.
The new order is scheduled to take effect on March 16. Legal challenges are expected.
