[The legal maneuvering led Mr. Trump to lash out at Judge James Robart of the Federal District Court in Seattle throughout the day, prompting criticism that the president had failed to respect the judicial branch and its power to check on his authority.]
By Mark Landler
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|
On
Friday, Judge James Robart of Federal District Court in Seattle declared
that “there’s no support” for the administration’s
argument that “we have to
protect the
U.S. from individuals” from seven predominantly Muslim
countries: Iran, Syria,
Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan and Libya. By
UNITED STATES COURTS on
Publish Date February 4, 2017.
|
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A federal appeals
court early Sunday rejected a request by the Justice Department to immediately
restore President Trump’s targeted travel ban, deepening a legal showdown over
his authority to tighten the nation’s borders in the name of protecting
Americans from terrorism.
In the legal back and forth over the travel
ban, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco
said a reply from the Trump administration was now due on Monday.
The ruling meant that refugees and travelers
from seven predominantly Muslim nations — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan,
Syria and Yemen — who were barred by an executive order signed by the president
on Jan. 27 would, for now, continue to be able to enter the country.
After a Federal District Court in Seattle
blocked Mr. Trump’s order nationwide on Friday, the Justice Department appealed
the ruling late Saturday, saying that the president had the constitutional
authority to order the ban and that the court ruling “second-guesses the
president’s national security judgment.”
On Saturday night, as Mr. Trump arrived at a
Red Cross gala at Mar-a-Lago, his waterfront Florida resort, where he was
spending the first getaway weekend of his presidency, reporters asked him if he
was confident he would prevail in the government’s appeal. “We’ll win,” he
replied. “For the safety of the country, we’ll win.”
The legal maneuvering led Mr. Trump to lash
out at Judge James Robart of the Federal District Court in Seattle throughout
the day, prompting criticism that the president had failed to respect the
judicial branch and its power to check on his authority.
In a Twitter post on Saturday, Mr. Trump
wrote, “The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes
law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!”
The Justice Department’s filing sought to
have the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit block the Seattle
judge’s decision and asked that the lower court’s ruling be stayed pending the
appeal.
In its argument for an appeal, the Justice
Department had said the president had an “unreviewable authority” to suspend
the entry of any class of foreigners. It said the ruling by Judge Robart was
too broad, “untethered” to the claims of the State of Washington, and in
conflict with a ruling by another federal district judge, in Boston, who had
upheld the order.
The Justice Department argued that the
president acted well within his constitutional authority. Blocking the order,
it concluded, “immediately harms the public by thwarting enforcement of an
Executive Order issued by the President, based on his national security judgment.”
Judge Robart, who was appointed by President
George W. Bush, declared in his ruling on Friday that “there’s no support” for
the administration’s argument that “we have to protect the U.S. from
individuals” from the affected countries.
His ruling also barred the administration
from enforcing its limits on accepting refugees. The State Department said
Saturday that refugees, including Syrians, could begin arriving as early as
Monday. Syrians had faced an indefinite ban under the executive order.
The Ninth Circuit court moved quickly to
reject the administration’s appeal, a measure of the urgency and intense
interest in the case.
Despite Mr. Trump’s vehement criticism of the
ruling and the certainty that it would be appealed, the government agencies at the
center of the issue, the State Department and the Department of Homeland
Security, moved quickly to comply.
Lawrence Bartlett, the State Department’s
director of refugee resettlement, wrote in a departmental email that officials
were working to rebook travel for refugees who had previously been scheduled to
leave for the United States over a three-week period that will end Feb. 17. A
State Department official said the extended time frame accounted for the fact
that some refugees will have to make difficult journeys back to airports from
refugee camps.
A United Nations spokesman, Leonard Doyle,
said about 2,000 refugees were ready to travel.
Airlines, citing American customs officials,
were telling passengers from the seven countries that their visas were once
again valid. Those carriers, however, have yet to report an uptick in travel,
and there appeared to be no rush to airports by visa holders in Europe and the
Middle East intent on making their way to the United States.
Etihad Airways, the United Arab Emirates’
national carrier, said in a statement: “Following advice received today from
the U.S. Customs and Border Protection unit at Abu Dhabi Airport, the airline
will again be accepting nationals from the seven countries named last week.”
Other Arab carriers, including Qatar Airways, issued similar statements.
A group of advocacy organizations that had
worked to overturn the executive order and help immigrants and refugees
stranded at airports issued a statement on Saturday afternoon encouraging travelers
“to rebook travel to the United States immediately.”
“We have been in contact with hundreds of
people impacted by the ban, and we are urging them to get on planes as quickly
as possible,” Clare Kane, a law student intern at the Jerome N. Frank Legal
Services Organization at Yale Law School, one of the groups involved, said in a
statement.
But some officials were being more cautious,
advising travelers to wait for further clarity. The American Embassy in Baghdad
said it was waiting for additional guidance from Washington. “We don’t know
what the effect will be, but we’re working to get more information,” the
embassy told The Associated Press in a statement.
The Department of Homeland Security said it
had suspended implementation of the order, including procedures to flag
travelers from the countries designated in Mr. Trump’s order. It said it would
resume standard inspection procedures. But in a statement, the department
defended the order as “lawful and appropriate.”
In his first statement on the matter on
Friday evening, the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, described the
Seattle judge’s action as “outrageous.” Minutes later, the White House issued a
new statement deleting the word outrageous.
Mr. Trump’s Twitter post showed no such
restraint. It recalled the attacks he made during the presidential campaign on
a federal district judge in California who was presiding over a class-action
lawsuit involving Trump University.
Democrats said the president’s criticism of
Judge Robart was a dangerous development. Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont,
a member of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that Mr. Trump seemed
“intent on precipitating a constitutional crisis.” Gov. Jay Inslee of
Washington, whose state filed the suit that led to the injunction, said the
attack was “beneath the dignity” of the presidency and could “lead America to
calamity.”
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the
Democratic leader, said in a statement that Mr. Trump’s outburst could weigh on
the confirmation process for Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, the president’s nominee for
the Supreme Court.
Until now, Mr. Trump had been comparatively
restrained about the multiple federal judges who have ruled against parts of
his immigration order, even as he staunchly defended its legality. Some
analysts had speculated that he did not want a repeat of the storm during the
campaign when he accused Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel of having a conflict of
interest in the Trump University case because the judge’s family was of Mexican
heritage. Mr. Trump, who had painted Mexicans as rapists and criminals, settled
that case after the election.
But on Saturday morning, Mr. Trump let loose,
and in the afternoon he unleashed another volley of attacks on the ruling. In
one Twitter message, he questioned why a judge could “halt a Homeland Security
travel ban,” which would allow “anyone, even with bad intentions,” to enter the
country. An hour later, he complained about the “terrible decision,” saying it
would let “many very bad and dangerous people” pour into the country.
Earlier, Mr. Trump had asserted, without
evidence, that some Middle Eastern countries supported the immigration order.
“Interesting that certain Middle-Eastern countries agree with the ban,” he
wrote. “They know that if certain people are allowed in it’s death &
destruction!”
The Washington State case was filed on
Monday, and it was assigned to Judge Robart that day. He asked for briefs on
whether the state had standing to sue, with the last one due on Thursday. On
Wednesday, Minnesota joined the suit.
On Friday evening, Judge Robart issued a
temporary restraining order, requiring the government to revert to its previous
immigration policies as the case moved forward. He found that the states and
their citizens had been injured by Mr. Trump’s order.
“The executive order adversely affects the
states’ residents in areas of employment, education, business, family relations
and freedom to travel,” Judge Robart wrote. He said the states had been hurt
because the order affected their public universities and their tax bases.
Still, Judge Robart’s order left many
questions, said Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law in
Houston.
“Does the executive order violate the equal
protection of the laws, amount to an establishment of religion, violate rights
of free exercise, or deprive aliens of due process of law?” Professor Blackman
asked. “Who knows? The analysis is bare bones, and leaves the court of appeals,
as well as the Supreme Court, with no basis to determine whether the nationwide
injunction was proper.”
While large crowds had yet to materialize at
airports, there were individual stories of people trying to enter the country.
Nael Zaino, 32, a Syrian who had tried
unsuccessfully for nearly a week to fly to the United States to join his wife
and American-born son, was allowed to board a flight from Istanbul and then
Frankfurt late Friday. He landed in Boston around 1 p.m. Saturday and emerged
from immigration two hours later, said his sister-in-law Katty Alhayek.
Mr. Zaino was believed to be among the first
revoked visa holders to enter the United States since the executive order went
into effect. His advocates had sought a waiver for him from the State
Department, citing family reunification. “Mine must be a very special case,”
Mr. Zaino said by phone from Istanbul.
Iranians, many of them students on their way
to American universities, also rushed to book flights to transfer destinations
in other Persian Gulf countries, Turkey and Europe. Pedram Paragomi, a
33-year-old Iranian medical student bound for the University of Pittsburgh, who
had been caught up in the initial chaos over the travel ban, flew to Frankfurt
on Saturday, where he was to transfer to a flight to Boston.
“I’m anxious,” he said from Frankfurt. “The
rules keep on changing, but I think I will make it this time.”
Reporting was contributed by Alexander Burns,
Russell Goldman, Nicholas Kulish and Somini Sengupta from New York; Adam
Liptak, Gardiner Harris, Ron Nixon, Eric Lichtblau and Noah Weiland from
Washington; and Thomas Erdbrink from Tehran.
