NEW YORK // A second federal judge
thwarted
Donald Trump’s signature security policy
on
Thursday, issuing an injunction against
the US
president’s revised six-nation travel ban
on the day it
was to take effect.
Judge Theodore Chuang, sitting in
Maryland, issued a
nationwide injunction after hearing a
case brought by
the American Civil Liberties Union and
other groups
who argued that Mr Trump’s executive
order
discriminated against Muslims.
In his ruling, the judge said Mr Trump’s
own words
suggested the travel ban was an attempt
to impose
tighter controls on Muslims. Changes
made to an
earlier version that was struck down did
not alter that
primary purpose, he said.
“Despite these changes, the history of
public
statements continues to provide a
convincing case
that the purpose of the second executive
order
remains the realisation of the long-
envisioned Muslim
ban,” Judge Chuang wrote.
His decision followed a similar ruling by
US district
court judge Derrick Watson, sitting in
Hawaii, who
said Mr Trump’s order was likely to be
found
unconstitutional even if it did not
mention Islam.
Mr Trump must now decide whether to
appeal the
decisions, rewrite his executive order for
a second
time, or abandon the ban altogether.
After the ruling
on Wednesday, issued just six hours
before the new
ban was to take effect, he pledged to
fight all the way
to the supreme court.
“This is – in the opinion of many –
unprecedented
judicial overreach,” Mr Trump said at a
rally in
Nashville, Tennessee.
He accused Judge Watson of acting for
political
reasons and insisted the US president
had ultimate
authority to determine who could and
could not enter
the country.
“We’re talking about the safety of our
nation, the
safety and security of our people,” he
said.
Mr Trump’s first order – which banned
the entry of
citizens of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya,
Sudan, Somalia and
Yemen for 90 days and temporarily
halted the US
refugee programme – survived just a
week amid
protests and more than 20 legal
challenges.
In response, the administration removed
Iraq from the
list and exempted legal permanent
residents and
people who had already been issued
visas.
Opponents said the revised order still
flouted
constitutional protections against
discrimination
based on religion or country of origin.
Hakim Ouansafi, president of the Muslim
Association
of Hawaii, said he was jubilant.
“Discrimination against six countries is
no less in
gravity than seven,” he said. “Just
because you
remove one doesn’t really address the
issue of a ban
on religion or country of origin.”
But he added that campaigners were
preparing for
more battles ahead.
“This is not over,” he said. “Knowing
Trump and his
temper tantrums I think he is going to
take this
somewhere else.”
Mr Trump’s first attempt to attempt to
restrict entry
to the US was overturned by a Seattle
court, a
decision upheld by an appeals court.
The issue was a key component of his
election
campaign. He promised to ban foreign
Muslims from
entering the US and warned that
terrorists could be
arriving by posing as Syrian refugees.
His pledge was watered down after
provoking
international condemnation.
The Trump administration has insisted
the executive
order was not a Muslim ban but was
essential for
protecting the US from terrorism.
However, government lawyers struggled
to make the
case that nationals of the banned
countries
constituted a greater risk than those
from elsewhere.
Their argument was undermined by a
leaked
department of homeland security report
that
concluded citizenship was an “unreliable”
indicator of
terrorist risk.
Lawyers for Hawaii also argued that the
state’s
tourism industry and universities were
being harmed
by the ban. Its small Muslim community,
the said,
also felt themselves the victims of
discrimination.
In his ruling, Judge Watson rejected the
government’s
position that the ban was religiously
neutral.
“The illogic of the government’s
contentions is
palpable,” he wrote.
His order quoted several interviews and
debates in
which Mr Trump talked about his plan
and the way it
evolved out of his idea for a Muslim ban.
During a televised presidential debate in
October, he
said: “The Muslim ban is something that
in some
form has morphed into an extreme
vetting from
certain areas of the world.”
Ultimately, Judge Watson said the
revised order had
not been changed sufficiently from the
original to
clear it of the charge of discrimination.
Mark Kende, of the American
Constitution Society and
professor of law at Drake University,
said it was
unusual for a judge to take such a bold
line.
“It’s a very blunt criticism of the
government in the
way it uses Mr Trump’s prior statements
about
Muslims and a Muslim ban,” he said.
“Sometimes
courts hesitate to use statements made
by presidents
before they are in office, or even when
they are in
office but speaking outside court.”
That left the way open to an appeal on
grounds that
Mr Trump had changed the wording of
the order or
that campaign rhetoric had no bearing on
its
motivation, he said.
“A higher court may say ‘we don’t care
what political
statements were made by Mr Trump
outside the
courtroom – we want to look at the court
record’,” he
said.
For now, campaigners are celebrating
another victory.
Omar Jadwat, of the American Civil
Liberties Union,
said: “The constitution has once again
put the brakes
on President Trump’s disgraceful and
discriminatory
ban.”