Judge Who Blocked The First Travel Ban Won’t Block The Second … Yet

Washington and Minnesota argued sections of the new order have the same effect as the original and the federal government can not decide unilaterally to change a court’s previous ruling.

The revised directive temporarily closes USA borders to all refugees and citizens from six mainly-Muslim countries.

Other aviation executives including Doug Parker, CEO of American Airlines, the world’s largest carrier by passenger numbers, have said recently they have not yet seen any discernible effects of the executive order.

The state of Maryland also challenged the revised travel ban order. “Cutting some illegal aspects of President Trump’s original travel ban does not cure his affront to our Constitution”.

“The question remains whether the revised order did enough to mollify the prospective traveler from Canada, Europe or elsewhere around the world who may have been put off by the initial travel ban”, said Roger Dow, chief executive of the group. Ferguson’s office says the TRO still applies to Trump’s new executive order because numerous enjoined provisions remain intact.

How did we get here?

Should the legal argument prove consistently successful, it could be the basis for a permanent turnover of the executive order.

This problem is highlighted in a new letter (full text) sent to President Donald Trump and signed by over 130 former senior USA government officials from both Democratic and Republican Administrations.

We’ve argued that these executive orders represent Trump’s unconstitutional Muslim ban in briefs filed in three of the court challenges to the first executive order: State of Washington v. Trump (which resulted in the first ban being frozen nationwide on February 3), Aziz v. Trump (in which a judge put the ban on hold in Virginia) and Pars Equality Center v. Trump (in which the court has yet to rule).

Washington state won an initial effort to block Trump’s first travel ban and is asking a judge to block the revised ban.

Fortunately, federal courts had the spine to stand up to Trump’s verbal assault on the judicial system’s integrity, forcing the administration to strip some blatant excesses from the original ban, such as the exclusion of people holding valid green cards and previously issued visas.

The letter says that the executive order sends a message to Muslim allies that the United States is an enemy of Islam, as the Islamic State believes.

The new order, unveiled on Monday, is due to go into effect March 16 and replaces the previous Trump directive that was blocked in federal court.

Iraq was taken off the banned list because its government boosted visa screening and data sharing, White House officials said.

Several other states said on Thursday they would move forward with legal challenges against the revised executive order signed by Trump.

Nevertheless, a judge in Wisconsin has already circumnavigated Mr Trump’s travel ban by allowing the wife and child of a Syrian refugee already granted asylum to enter the country.

The first order, which temporarily halted the entry of refugees and travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries, was hit by more than two-dozen lawsuits.