A U.S. appeal court late on Saturday denied an emergency appeal from
the U.S. Department of Justice to restore an immigration order from
President Donald Trump barring citizens from seven mainly Muslim
countries and temporarily banning refugees. Read the full report from MSN.com
“Appellants’ request
for an immediate administrative stay pending full consideration of the
emergency motion for a stay pending appeal is denied,” the ruling by the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said.
It said a reply from the Department in support of the emergency appeal was due on Monday.
The
Department filed the appeal a day after a federal judge in Seattle
ordered Trump’s travel ban to be lifted. The president’s Jan. 27 order
had barred admission of citizens from the seven nations for 90 days.
The government moved to reverse a federal judge’s Friday
order that lifted the travel ban and warned the decision posed an
immediate harm to the public, thwarted enforcement of an executive order
and “second-guesses the president’s national security judgment about
the quantum of risk posed by the admission of certain classes of
(non-citizens) and the best means of minimizing that risk.”
Friday’s ruling prompted Trump to denounce the “so-called” judge in a series of tweets on Saturday..
The
appeal now goes to a three-judge panel which can act at anytime to
uphold the order or suspend it pending a full appeal. A Justice
Department spokesman declined to comment beyond the filing.
A ruling could come at any time.
Seattle
U.S. District Judge James Robart’s decision barred the administration
from enforcing the sweeping order that also indefinitely barred Syrian
refugee admissions and prompted large protests across the United States.
Trump,
whose personal attack on Robart, decrying his opinion as “ridiculous,”
went too far for some who said the president was undermining an
institution designed to check the power of the White House and Congress,
said he was confident the government would prevail.
“We’ll win. For the safety of the country, we’ll win,” he told reporters in Florida.
Robart’s
ruling came in a case brought by the state attorney general of
Washington state and was backed by major state employers Amazon.com
Inc and Expedia Inc. . The lawsuit is one of several now filed against
the Trump executive order around the United States, but it was the first
case leading to a broad decision that applies nationwide.
The
Justice Department appeal criticized Robart’s legal reasoning, saying it
violates the separation of powers and steps on the president’s
authority as commander chief.
The appeal said the state of
Washington lacked standing to challenge the order and denied that the
order “favors Christians at the expense of Muslims.”
Congress gave
the president “the unreviewable authority to suspend the admission of
any class” of visitor, the Justice Department wrote.
“Courts are
particularly ill-equipped to second-guess the president’s prospective
judgment about future risks,” the appeal said, calling the decision
“vastly overbroad.”
Washington state lawyers worked around the
clock last weekend against the backdrop of turbulent scenes at U.S.
airports, where immigrants were detained by federal officials unprepared
to implement the president’s directive.
A spokesman for Washington state attorney general Bob Ferguson didn’t immediately comment early Sunday.
The
U.S. State Department and Department of Homeland Security said they
were complying with Robart’s order and many visitors are expected to
start arriving on Sunday, while the government said it expects to begin
admitting refugees again on Monday.
A decision to reinstate
Trump’s order could again cause havoc at U.S. airports because some
visitors are in transit, as was the case when the order took effect on
Jan. 27.
As the ban lifted Friday, refugees and thousands of
travelers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen who
had been stopped in their tracks last weekend by the executive order
scrambled to get flights to quickly enter the United States.
The
panel that will decide whether to immediately block the ruling includes
three judges appointed by former Republican president George W. Bush and
two former Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.
U.S.
immigration advocacy groups including the American Civil Liberties
Union on Saturday in a joint statement urged those with now valid visas
from the seven nations “to consider rebooking travel to the United
States immediately” because the ruling could be overturned or put on
hold.
A U.S. State Department email reviewed by Reuters said the
department is working to begin admitting refugees including Syrians as
soon as Monday.
SEPARATION OF POWERS
It
is unusual for a president to attack a member of the judiciary, which
the U.S. Constitution designates as a check to the power of the
executive branch and Congress.
Reached by email Saturday, Robart declined comment on Trump’s tweets.
Democratic
U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont said in a statement Saturday that
Trump’s “hostility toward the rule of law is not just embarrassing, it
is dangerous. He seems intent on precipitating a constitutional crisis.”
In
an interview with ABC scheduled to air Sunday, Vice President Mike
Pence said he did not think that Trump’s criticisms of the judge
undermined the separation of powers.
The court ruling was the first move in what could be months of legal challenges to Trump’s push to clamp down on immigration.
The
sudden reversal of the ban catapulted would-be immigrants back to
airports, with uncertainty over how long the window to enter the United
States will remain open.
In Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish
region of northern Iraq, Fuad Sharef and his family prepared to fly on
Saturday to Istanbul and then New York before starting a new life in
Nashville, Tennessee.
Virtually all refugees also were barred by
Trump’s order, upending the lives of thousands of people who have spent
years seeking asylum in the United States. (Reporting by David
Shepardson; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Source: Reuters
