On Wednesday afternoon, March 15, 2017, a federal judge in Hawaii blocked President Donald Trump’s “revised” travel ban, just hours before it was about to go into effect.
The ruling — which FORTUNATELY, applies nationwide — means that travelers from six Muslim-majority countries and refugees will definitely be able to travel to the US.
The Trump administration took over a month to rewrite the travel ban order after numerous federal courts across multiple states blocked its implementation in February. The President was “considerate” and removed one out of seven countries he had previously banned, Iraq. The President believes Iraq has stepped up its game in visa and passport regulations, also defined by him as “proper vetting.” If we operate on the President’s definition of “proper vetting” the President’s promise of keeping America safe falls short. Venezuela, A country that has been verified to be giving passports to known terrorists has failed to appear on the list of countries without “proper vetting” and people are free to travel to and from Venezuela to the United States without any trouble. The countries the President chose to be a part of his list of countries without proper vetting have been verified by the Department of Homeland Security, to pose NO threat to the United States at this time.
The lawsuits have also claimed that the order disrupts the proper functions of large companies, charities, public universities and hospitals that have strong relations and ties overseas. In the Hawaii case, nearly five dozen technology companies, including Airbnb, Dropbox, Lyft, and TripAdvisor, joined in a brief objecting to the travel ban.
US District Court Judge Derrick Watson concluded that the new executive order still failed to pass legal muster.
“The illogic of the Government’s contentions is palpable. The notion that one can demonstrate animus toward any group of people only by targeting all of them at once is fundamentally flawed,” Watson wrote.
“Equally flawed is the notion that the Executive Order cannot be found to have targeted Islam because it applies to all individuals in the six referenced countries,” Watson added. “It is undisputed, using the primary source upon which the Government itself relies, that these six countries have overwhelmingly Muslim populations that range from 90.7% to 99.8%.”
“It would therefore be no paradigmatic leap to conclude that targeting these countries likewise targets Islam,” Watson added. “Certainly, it would be inappropriate to conclude, as the Government does, that it does not.”
The new ban was announced earlier this month and was set to take effect on March 16, 2017, at midnight. It would ban people from the predominantly Muslim countries of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the US for 90 days and all refugees for 120 days.
The White House has not commented yet on Watson’s ruling, but the Trump administration argues unnecessarily that the ban is required to “protect” the nation’s security. If the Department of Homeland Security has VERIFIED NO THREAT, from these countries, why does the President continue to push his agenda?
