Saturday, January 28, 2017
WASHINGTON
Another federal court ruled tonight against part of President Donald Trump’s executive order barring citizens of seven Muslim nations from entering the United States.
After a federal court in Brooklyn granted a nationwide stay preventing the government from deporting people who arrived with valid U.S. visas, a second judge in Virginia issued a temporary restraining order preventing the deportation of permanent U.S. residents who arrived at Dulles International Airport outside Washington. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia also ruled that the detained passengers must be given access to an attorney.
Brinkema, who sentenced Zacarias Moussaoui, a 9/11 conspirator, to life in prison, was appointed by President Bill Clinton.
The first stay was granted after an emergency hearing in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the rights watchdog better known as the ACLU, on behalf of two men who’d been detained at JFK airport in New York. The men were later released.
The ACLU, other civil rights groups and hundreds of protesters at U.S. airports cheered the decision, though they cautioned that the reprieve is temporary and affects only visa holders who’ve already arrived in the United States and are being held at airports. While it prevents them from being deported, the ruling stops short of ordering their release, raising concerns among attorneys about an extended detention as the arrivals wait in limbo for a permanent decision in the case.
The ACLU estimates that between 100 and 200 people are being held in U.S. airports because of Trump’s executive order, which upended thousands of lives overnight, including permanent U.S. residents who were denied entry or stranded abroad over the weekend.
Outraged families and advocacy groups publicized cases of visa holders and permanent residents, including some who’ve held so-called green cards for decades, being detained at airports or barred from entering the United States, including at least 50 who were being held at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Angry, confused and frustrated family members who’d been waiting for loved ones chanted “this is what democracy looks like” and held signs that read “Release our Family!” and “Deport Trump!!” in the international area of DFW’s Terminal D. Federal officials would not confirm the number of people being detained and DFW Airport officials declined to comment.
Large crowds of protesters also gathered outside John F. Kennedy airport in New York after word circulated that two Iraqis had been detained. Airports in San Francisco and a few other cities drew similar demonstrations.
Trump’s order halted refugee admissions and imposes a 90-day ban on entry for citizens of a select group of Middle East and North African nations.
Trump told reporters at the White House that the new order is “working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over.”
Immigration specialists, however, said the wording of the order is so murky that its true scope - at least as it applies to permanent residents and dual citizens - will become clear only through test cases.
A first round of arrivals Saturday caused chaos, with outcomes ranging from immediate deportation to entry for green-card holders only after they’d been questioned for hours about their beliefs. There were also reports of airlines turning back passengers with reservations to travel to the United States because of the new order.
Google, the Silicon Valley search giant, announced that the order may affect as many as 200 of its staff who were traveling outside the country either for work or vacation. Google CEO Sundar Pichai blasted the order in a note to employees.
“It’s painful to see the personal cost of this executive order on our colleagues,” Pichai wrote. “We’ve always made our view on immigration issues known publicly and will continue to do so.”
Employees of other technology companies were likely to find themselves in similar straits because of the order. Silicon Valley companies employ thousands of non-U.S. citizens.
Also affected were Iraqis who’d helped the United States during the war there but were denied entry, even though they’d been approved under a program that gives them priority for resettlement. U.S. military veterans angrily took to Twitter, denouncing Trump’s order as a betrayal of Iraqis who provided life-saving intelligence and translation services.
“This had been my dream,” said a devastated Fuad Sharef, who’d sold his house in Iraq and quit his job in order to be resettled in Nashville, Tenn., under the program.
Sharef, his wife and their two children were prevented from boarding a connecting flight from Egypt to the United States. They were forced to board a plane back to Irbil, in Iraq’s Kurdish north.
“No explanation,” he said by phone from the airport. “No explanation, no justification.”
The order applies to citizens of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya. Visa holders and refugees shouldn’t even try to enter, immigration attorneys said. Permanent residents and dual citizens might be able to persuade border security officials to allow them in, they said.
Green-card holders who’d been issued permission to live and work in the United States permanently but who were abroad when Trump’s order went into effect will have their cases reviewed individually and will require a waiver before they can enter the United States, said a senior administration official with knowledge of the situation but who’s not authorized to speak publicly.
Green-card holders in the United States will have to meet with a government official before leaving the country, the official added.
The White House pushed back on the portrayal of the order as a “Muslim ban,” listing several predominantly Muslim countries that are exempt.
“We’re dealing with a relatively small universe of people,” the official said. “It’s important to keep in mind that no person living or residing overseas has a right to entry to the U.S.”
The official also implied that the administration was considering some sort of hardship exemption for refugees who’ve been approved to enter the United States but are currently in a third country. He said the administration is working to define what “in transit” means before announcing how such a procedure might work.
Civil rights groups called Trump’s measures discriminatory and ineffective. They fought back by filing the first legal challenge to the order, on behalf of two Iraqi men who’d been targeted in Iraq because of their work with the U.S. military. The men had been approved for resettlement but were denied entry and detained at JFK airport in New York, according to a statement by the National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy group. Their case was the basis of the emergency stay issued late Saturday night.
Attorney Tarek Z. Ismail said he’s been on the phone nonstop with anguished travelers and their families. One was from a university student, a permanent U.S. resident who’d spent most of her life here, who heard about the ban while on a research trip to her country of origin, which Ismail did not name out of privacy concerns. She boarded a flight to the United States 20 hours before Trump signed the order, but her plane was delayed and she landed half an hour after it took effect.
“This was a complete life shift that was going to happen in the blink of an eye,” said Ismail, the senior staff attorney at CUNY Law School’s CLEAR project, which addresses legal needs of Muslim, Arab and South Asian communities in the New York City area.
Ismail said he had little faith that the government would repeal the ban after a review in 90 days. The idea that it’s temporary, he said, “is folly.”
“This is Donald Trump we’re talking about,” Ismail said.
Allegra Klein spent Saturday frantically calling legal experts to advise her on how to get her Iraqi-born husband, a green card holder since 2015, back from Thailand.
Klein and her husband met on a plane five years ago when they both worked in Baghdad - “love at first sight,” she said - and endured years of turmoil in Iraq before moving to the States to build a more tranquil life. Her husband, a professional athlete who asked not to be named, was in Thailand officiating at an International Wheelchair Basketball Federation championship when Trump announced the order. He was scheduled to return in a few days.
Now Klein faces the prospect of an open-ended separation from her husband as well as thousands of dollars in expenses for immigration attorneys and housing abroad for her stranded spouse. He faces loss of wages if he can’t return to the United States, and Klein said the ordeal could force her to withdraw from classes at the University of Connecticut.
“I am frankly, terrified,” Klein said. “And it’s not some terrorist organization that’s done this to us - it’s our president.”