Appeals court sets hearing in travel ban case
- by Virginia Carter
- in World Media
- — Mar 25, 2017
A federal judge in Virginia ruled Friday against blocking President Trump's executive order that called for temporarily stopping the entry of immigrants from six majority-Muslim nations and refugee admittance overall. And since the president does have authority to halt immigration, he ruled Trump's order should go into effect.
Earlier this month, after President Trump signed the second Executive Order, CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said: "This scaled-back order represents a partial victory for Americans fighting for the rights of immigrants in the US and directly responds to several immigration cases and scenarios brought forward in CAIR's anti-ban lawsuit".
"Fortunately, this decision does not alter the injunctions that are already preventing the implementation of the Trump administration's illegal "Muslim ban 2.0" executive order", said CAIR National Litigation Director Lena Masri.
"Plaintiffs can succeed on their claim that the predominate goal of EO-2 is to discriminate against Muslims based on their religion and that EO-2 is a pretext or a sham for that objective", he wrote. It is now likely that a final decision will have to be made by the Supreme Court. "The Department of Justice is pleased with the ruling", said Sarah Isgur Flores, a Justice Department spokesperson.
The Justice Department championed the news.
But Trenga said only the order itself should be up for review by the courts - not the president's past comments.
"The illogic of the Government's contentions is palpable", Watson wrote in his ruling.
Since that ruling, Watson has received death threats and is now under 24-hour federal protection from the US Marshals Service. "The notion that one can demonstrate animus toward any group of people only by targeting all of them at once is fundamentally flawed", Watson wrote in the ruling.
Chuang granted a nationwide preliminary injunction, though he did not block the entire order. Even a small fraction of the 31% who supported the travel ban agreed with the majority that "it might have a negative effect" on the sector.
