Tag: immigration

Federal court halts Trump’s immigration ban

1/28/17 at about 8:45 EST:  Per Dale Hoe, Director, ACLU Voting Rights Project

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updated to add:  from The New Civi Rights Movement

A federal judge in New York on Saturday evening issued a nationwide order blocking the deportation of people detained in the U.S. under President Donald Trump’s immigration and refugee ban.

U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly, an Obama nominee who took the bench in 2015, issued the ruling in response to a lawsuit brought by the ACLU, the National Immigration Law Center and other groups on behalf of two Iraqi men detained at JFK Airport earlier Saturday.

Both men had U.S. Visas and were in the air when Trump signed the order Friday, which blocked people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the country for 90 days. The order also halted the U.S. refugee program for 120 days, and indefinitely suspended the intake of refugees from Syria.

Initial reports on Twitter indicated that the judge’s order applies only to those who were either in transit or had already been detained. That means it won’t necessarily prevent the Trump administration from implementing the ban going forward.

So, it looks like it only includes those who are currently detained or are in the process of traveling to the US.

Federal court halts Trump’s immigration ban

Trump’s Immigration Order Expands the Definition of ‘Criminal’

1/27/17:

In Trump’s EO:

anyone who has “committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense,” meaning anyone the authorities believe has broken any type of law — regardless of whether that person has been charged with a crime….

“fraud or willful misrepresentation in connection with any official matter or application before a governmental agency,” a category that includes anyone who has used a false Social Security number to obtain a job, as many unauthorized immigrants do….

anyone who “in the judgment of an immigration officer” poses a risk to either public safety or national security. That gives immigration officers the broad authority they have been pressing for, and no longer requires them to receive a review from a supervisor before targeting individuals…

so basically anybody.  Whether or not it can be accomplished is another matter:

in order to put the 15,000 additional immigration agents he wants in place around the country and along the border, Mr. Trump needs spending approval from Congress. Even then, additional detention centers would also be needed.

The most significant hurdle is the tremendous backlog in the immigration courts. Even if immigration officials initiated thousands of deportations immediately, court dates for those immigrants would be at least a year and a half away.

Trump’s Immigration Order Expands the Definition of ‘Criminal’