Federal Judge Grants Nationwide Injunction Against Trump Ban In Washington State Lawsuit, Following Massachusetts Federal Court Loss & Virginia Court Ruling
WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Washington issued the furthest reaching order yet against President Trump’s refugee and travel ban executive order, granting a nationwide order halting enforcement of significant parts of the order.
“For the reasons stated on the record, the court grants Plaintiffs’ Emergency Motion for Temporary Restraining Order. A written order will follow,” a notation on the court docket Friday afternoon stated.
“The decision shuts down the executive order immediately,” Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a news conference outside the courthouse after US District Judge James Robart issued his ruling in the lawsuit, brought by Ferguson on behalf of the state.
“No one is above the law — not even the President,” Ferguson said.
Ferguson had been seeking an order halting enforcement of both the refugee and section addressing travel from seven majority-Muslim nations. A written copy of the judge’s order, however, was not immediately available to determine the precise confines of the judge’s ruling.
In an interview on CNN, Ferguson said Robart ruled the state had standing to bring the lawsuit and said the state was likely to succeed in its constitutional names — although he added that Robart did not specify in court as to which constitutional arguments he believe the state likely would be successful.
MASSACHUSETTS: The ruling came shortly after a federal judge in Massachusetts provided the Trump administration with its first win in the many challenges to the president’s executive order temporarily halting the refugee program and stopping immigration by people from seven Muslim-majority countries.
US District Judge Nathaniel Gorton issued the order declining to renew the temporary restraining order previously issued by another judge in the federal court in Massachusetts who heard the challenge to Trump’s ban this past weekend.
The ruling in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts was the second order of the day on the issue — one week after President Trump signed the measure.
VIRGINIA: The first order of the day came when, earlier Friday, US District Judge Leonie Brinkema in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia extended an order providing access to lawyers and preventing the deportation of lawful permanent residents from Dulles International Airport.
Additionally, Brinkema ordered the federal government to provide Virginia — who successfully sought to intervene in the case — with a list of all people who have been denied entry or deported since the executive order was signed who had a residence in Virginia and lawful permanent residence status or a valid immigrant, student, or work visa. The list must be turned over by Feb. 9.
In the course of the hearing, the Justice Department also put a number on the number of visas affected by the temporary ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority nations: 100,000. The number would represent approximately 1% of all visas issued by the US in a given year.
The State Department, however, pushed back on that claim, saying the number is only 60,000.
Brinkema, who noted that she handled cases relating to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, said in court Friday that she had never seen a public outpouring like the one she has seen in response to the executive order.
“This order touched something in the United States that I have never seen before,” she said.
The president has broad discretion to act on immigration matters, Brinkema noted, but “it’s not unfettered.” Not all of the thought that should have gone into the executive order did, she added.
During the hearing, Brinkema also held that Virginia could intervene in the case, over the objection of the Justice Department. The move means the lawsuit could continue even if the Justice Department resolves the claims brought by the individual plaintiffs who initially brought the case.
Although Virginia had questioned whether the attempt to settle claims with the named plaintiffs was an attempt to keep Virginia from joining the lawsuit, Erez Reuveni, a senior litigation counsel in the Office of Immigration Litigation at the Justice Department, pushed back against that, saying, “We will meet Virginia in court, I have no doubt about that,” and later adding, “We are not trying to run and hide.”
In court on Friday, Reuveni said about 100,000 visas had been revoked in the wake of the president’s issuance of the executive order; an earlier State Department memo said that they had been “provisionally revoked.”
In a statement later Friday, Will Cocks, the spokesperson for the State Department Bureau of Consular Affairs reiterated the “provisional” revocation — and disputed the Justice Department’s number.
“Fewer than 60,000 individuals’ visas were provisionally revoked to comply with the Executive Order. We recognize that those individuals are temporarily inconvenienced while we conduct our review under the Executive Order,” Cocks said in a statement. “To put that number in context, we issued over 11 million immigrant and non-immigrant visas in fiscal year 2015. As always, national security is our top priority when issuing visas.”
A State Department official followed up, noting that the number was based on the number of valid visas issued to applicants on record as being a national of one of the seven countries. The provisional revocation, the official continued, means that the State Department has invalidated a visa for use to travel to the United States and apply for entry, but remains free to restore the visa’s validity later without the person needing to submit a new visa application. The revocation does not, however, have any impact on the legal status of those already in the United States, the official said.
Near the end of the Friday morning hearing, Brinkema said it was a “real problem” when people were vetted by the US government and authorized to come to the United States, only to have that authorization revoked without fact-finding and hard evidence that there was a need to do so.
“It has obviously thrown hundreds of thousands of people into states of discomfort,” she said.
In response to Virginia’s request that federal officials show that they were following Brinkema’s initial order, the judge said that she was troubled by accusations regarding denial of counsel but would hold off for now on taking any action on the request.
In a later order from the court, Brinkema denied the request, formally a motion for an order to show cause.
Hearseeno 