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Federal Judge Halts Trump’s Executive Action on Immigration
Following a chaotic day of airport protests, taxi work stoppages, and general anger about President Trump’s executive order to temporarily ban immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries, a federal judge in New York has issued an emergency stay. From The Hill:
Published in Domestic Policy, Immigration, LawThe court ruled on a habeas corpus petition filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of two Iraqi men who were detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Friday after Trump’s ban, The Verge reported Saturday night.
Since then both men, Hameed Khalid Darweesh and Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshaw, have been granted entry to the U.S.
The ruling deals with a portion of Trump’s order handed down Friday, which bars Syrian refugees indefinitely and halts the resettlement of all refugees for four months as the administration reviews the vetting process.
Admission will resume only after vetting has been deemed “adequate” by the secretary of State, the secretary of Homeland Security and Director of National Intelligence.
Jamie, you need to understand that you are talking about the exception – I’m willing to bet that it’s a tiny fraction of the people trying to come here under “refugee” status.
I saw a report somewhere that there may be as many as 200 being held in airports and such right now. My first thought was, “holy cow, how many of these people are flooding in here every day?
I do think you have to have a herd of paperwork and an interview to receive a green card.
I’m more concerned with the precendent and processes established than specific outcomes. I find this EO odious.
Fingerprinting. Extensive background checks. Every single run in with the law down to parking tickets is questioned. One thing to keep in mind – you have to be in the US as a legal resident for quite a while before you get a green card.
On what basis are you insinuating that Judge Donnelly is “corrupt”? She is a solid and very well-regarded former prosecutor in the Manhattan DA’s Office and was confirmed 95-2 by the Senate.
Really? Odious? We stop them for 120 days from flooding in here with no vetting, in order to ramp up our vetting process to try to stop those who want to do harm to America? That’s odious to you? There is a whole continent – the EU – willing to take them in during that 120 days. Now Canada has stepped up, so I assume they were accepting them before. What is so odious to you that they can’t get to Cleveland for a few months?
Sure, it makes sense to review everyone in the green card and H1B category. But it sure makes it seem like the USA doesn’t keep its word to start turning away people who were out of the country and returning home on some particular day.
No, their jurisdiction is not limited to the districts they work in. And that’s a good thing: in Texas v. United States, Texas and many other states were able to obtain a nationwide injunction against Obama’s illegal Deferred Action for Parents of DACA Recipients. If you have a strong claim under federal law, a federal district court can enter a nationwide injunction against any party over which it has jurisdiction (here, DHS, the USCIS, and the President).
EDIT: Roughly speaking, federal district courts exercise jurisdiction for civil cases in personam (over a person) or in rem (over a thing). They do not have general, freewheeling “nationwide” jurisdiction to enter any order they please. If you live in California and are sued civilly in the Southern District of New York (essentially, Manhattan), a plaintiff would have to establish that you have some substantial tie to Manhattan to make the exercise of jurisdiction over you lawful. But institutions like the federal government are practically subject to jurisdiction before every federal district court. In rem jurisdiction is typically limited to objects physically located in the territory of a district court.
In criminal cases, the government must allege that a judicial district is the proper venue for trial, meaning that some part of the crime occurred in that district.
Note:
Personal attack.Any judge that doesn’t find in favor [redacted] is corrupt.
Meh. Of a piece.
When Modi became Prime Minister there was immediately a lot of minority fear in India – basically along the lines of omg this guy is going to burn us all alive or something.
But. My aunt (who has lived through quite a bit) said something quite interesting: nothing bad is going to happen right away – they will be fine for a few years.
It’s when he starts failing to deliver his substantive promises, and his supporters notice, that the party will turn back to this as a way to mobilise (and satisfy) its base.
And that, as it turns out, is what has happened.
Back to Trump: it’s a pre-emptive strike to mobile his supporters in preparation for some pretty big (planned?) disppointments. So it’s not poorly thought out at all, imho. He’s good at this domestic politics stuff.
That’s simply inaccurate. If they have a visa, and especially if they have a Green Card, they’ve been extensively vetted.
If the EU and Canada are willing to take them for 120 days these places must have some confidence in the vetting process that got them the US visa in the first place.
Doesn’t this strike you as strange? If the initial vetting process was so poorly executed.
These are Article III judges, and have the same life tenure as Judges on the Circuit Courts of Appeals and Justices of the Supreme Court. If a new President could “fire” an Article III judge, the United States Constitution would be a nullity.
Article III judges can be impeached and removed from office, but that absolutely, positively will not happen here, and absolutely positively should not.
Expectations are the cornerstone of disappointment.
The story of the case is not detailed enough to know exactly what happened, and I’m not going to go hunting the case itself tonight. The initial stories were wrong, the walkbacks from both reporters and the administration are ongoing. We’ll find out more in a few days. (Who wants to take bets on whether dropping this on a Friday was deliberately intended to inculcate confusion, or is just end-of-the-week business, or actual incompetence at running the executive branch? I won’t be betting, but I’ll take the book…)
1.) The EO text does not obviously include greencard holders. The reports I read say that interpretation comes from DHS. I would not discount malicious compliance as a cause, much like the Parks Services’ shenanigans with closing off the DC monuments. There are conflicting stories as to whether this was run by DHS before announcement or not. Were I guessing, it was run by the new secretary, maybe some of the top guys, but not the career bureaucracy.
2.) The EO does not stop the settlement of refugees. It sets the number at 50,000/year (up from Bush, down from late Obama, but consistent with early Obama) and instructs the relevant agencies to vet the refugees themselves, especially for religious minorities suffering persecution. Sotto voce, “not rely on the UN, which keeps excluding Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East.”
This is all fake news. The Liberal judge made the argument out of thin air. It’s the judge that will be proven wrong. There is nothing in the Order that references green card holders or residents. Read it here.
The order mentions the word “alien” twice and in both paragraphs it is quite clear the language is referring to people at point of entry. I quoted the paragraphs in this other Ricochet thread on the subject.
And also a Muslim.
Please continue.
In what way is this “fake news”?
So the Iraqis represented by the ACLU were green card holders?
Both of these possibilities are plausible and in keeping with Trump’s prior behavior. Perhaps he is bidding high to make a steal look like compromise. Or perhaps Trump is again playing the media game by keeping the outrage stories rolling in… with little time to linger on anything before the next shocker.
Or perhaps he bumbled. We won’t know for a while yet.
Manny, a green card holder is an alien. No one is saying the EO permits rounding up Green Card holders present in the U.S. The concern is that green card holders (who are certainly aliens under the Immigration Laws) are being denied admission at points of entry.
Where is the fake news?
Let me help you – for Manny “fake news” means “news I don’t like”.
The White House disagrees:
One almost gets the impression they’re making it up as they go along.
Manny, what really bugs me is the reflexive comment about Judge Donnelly being a “liberal” judge. I think you should educate yourself a little better before you throw labels around.
I would not assume that formerly stringent processes for selecting immigrant candidates have been executed according to law or tradition under President Obama.
We have seen how his administration corrupted and abused various authorities in other departments (IRS, DoJ, EPA, etc). Also, many Muslims (but pointedly not Christians) were admitted from war-torn countries in which documentation was burned, local government and lines of communication destroyed, and there was generally no way to verify identities and personal histories.
In short, the determinations of a lawless president’s administration merit review. That does not mean it makes sense to ban green card holders immediately, indiscriminately, and without notice until those reviews occur.
I would like to know why Bannon is telling people how to interpret this.
And you guys accuse my side of issuing diktats.
We Iranians (permanent resident or not) are already barred from working in sensitive fields. A perfectly sensible state of affairs, of course, given the unfortunate nature of the Iranian government. There is already an extensive vetting process for getting a Green Card, which takes months if not years. Just because someone “worked in a lab” and “was traveling back and forth” does not mean they are a threat.
I don’t believe that the US is under any obligation to issue a visa to anyone and mainly blame the Iranian government for the misery of my people, but once someone is made a permanent resident it is understood that they have a legal right to travel which cannot be arbitrarily taken away. The real tragedy is that most Iranians living abroad are opponents of the regime like myself who are trying to escape the oppression.
Libertarian/Conservatives like myself have long tried to steer the Iranian-American community (currently numbered at more than a million; mostly secular) away from the Democrats. Looks like a rough road lying ahead for us…
That’s another possibility. If Trump is a man of action and his advisors at any given time go along with it, then he might rush something through before the usual filters in the State Department, Congress, or wherever else get their hands on the proposal. Straight to the printing press before editing.
If that is the case, Trump is likely to try avoiding future embarrassments and/or powerful people around him like Paul Ryan will try to keep a closer eye on him so to cut off hasty mistakes.
Supposedly, the Justice Department didn’t get to review the order.
For this theory to be valid, Trump would need to possess shame. There is no evidence that he does.
That too.
Part of the problem is that Trump appears to be trying to reduce the discretion of the agencies (hence the hamfistedness of the order and not briefing the full agencies until the rollout), but he doesn’t know how to do it (hence it doesn’t have as much specificity as it actually needs). I’d be laying my money on “rookie mistake” followed by “playing by ear.”
Regarding “diktat,” like it or not, Congress gave the President the ability to do this in 2015, and Obama exercised the power in both 2015 and on his own authority in 2011. That accounts for the choice of countries (the ones Congress authorized). It does not account for why it covers greencard holders (and James’ post finally links it back to the White House, not DHS).