With Trump’s revised executive order on the travel ban, he sought to resolve the legal questions that have caused the cessation of the executive order’s first version.
Legal experts claim that the present administration has succeeded in strengthening Trump’s travel ban by applying the travel restriction to a fewer number of people and exempting certain classes of individuals including the legal permanent residents. With the updated travel ban, Trump has provided a more detailed and better-written rationale for the new policy.
However, Trump’s order remains vulnerable to its challengers who insist that the executive order is just an extension of what they call as a ‘Muslim ban,’ which is a policy that the President pledged during the campaign. The same people say that the executive order was only labeled as the ‘travel ban’ because a Muslim ban would be a violation of the First Amendment which protects citizens against religious discrimination.
In an interview, Immigration Litigation Office’s former chief, Leon Fresco, said that if the order was issued by another President with a different context in which the travel ban was issued, the order would certainly be upheld in court.
The revised travel ban bars all entry to foreigners that are from 6 Muslim-majority countries for 90 days. It also suspends all refugee US resettlements from all over the world for 120 days. As for Syrian refugees, they are no longer subjected to the first order’s indefinite ban.
The travel restriction of 90 days applies to Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Iran, Libya, and Yemen, which are the countries that were contained in the original order of the President. Congress and the Obama administration designated these countries, including Iraq, as posing threats of terrorism. President Trump removed Iraq, which is a crucial counter-terrorism partner, from the list of banned countries in the new order.
Hawaii was among the first states to sue the new order. As a matter of fact, a hearing of the same case is scheduled on Wednesday. On the same day, a Maryland federal judge will also hear arguments over the ban in a different lawsuit.
Meanwhile, the states that took part in blocking the original travel ban of the President are currently mounting challenges over the second one. Bob Ferguson, along with other Democratic attorney generals, asked a federal judge to extend the freeze of the first executive order and also apply it to Trump’s updated restrictions.
The new order will take effect on Thursday if there is no court that will intervene. Experts believe that since fewer people are shaken up by the revised version of the travel ban, challengers will find it more difficult to find plaintiffs that may sue.
The intent behind Trump’s executive order that targets Muslim countries remains unconstitutional. Ferguson said that he would make sure that the judge who halted the original travel ban extends the cessation to the new order. As of now, several states are hopping on the bandwagon. Trump rejects accusations of religious intent, even noting the fact that most Muslim-majority nations were not covered in the order.
