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New travel ban blocked
Five GOP-nominated judges signal support for travel ban
Federal judge blocks new travel ban; Trump calls it 'judicial overreach'
Story highlights
- The travel ban was set to go into effect Thursday at midnight
- Judge Derrick Watson said statements from Trump and others "betray the Executive Order's stated secular purpose"
(CNN)A
federal judge in Hawaii blocked President Donald Trump's new travel ban
on Wednesday afternoon, hours before the ban was set to go into effect.
In a 43-page ruling,
US District Court Judge Derrick Watson concluded in no uncertain terms
that the new executive order failed to pass legal muster at this stage
and the state had established "a strong likelihood of success" on their
claims of religious discrimination.
Trump decried the ruling during a rally Wednesday night in Nashville, introducing his statement as "the bad, the sad news."
"The order he blocked was a watered-down version of the first one," Trump said, as the crowd booed the news.
"This
is, in the opinion of many, an unprecedented judicial overreach," he
added, before pledging to take the issue to the Supreme Court if
necessary.
The practical effect of the ruling --
which applies nationwide -- is that travelers from six Muslim-majority
countries and refugees will be able to travel to the US.
Unlike
the previous executive order, the new one removed Iraq from the list of
banned countries, exempted those with green cards and visas and removed
a provision that arguably prioritizes certain religious minorities.
The
new ban was announced earlier this month and was set to take effect
Thursday. It would have banned people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan,
Syria, and Yemen from entering the US for 90 days and all refugees for
120 days.
"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."
"When
considered alongside the constitutional injuries and harms ... and the
questionable evidence supporting the Government's national security
motivations, the balance of equities and public interests justify
granting the Plaintiffs' (request to block the new order)," Watson
wrote.
The Justice Department said it will defend the new travel ban.
"The
Department of Justice strongly disagrees with the federal district
court's ruling, which is flawed both in reasoning and in scope. The
President's Executive Order falls squarely within his lawful authority
in seeking to protect our Nation's security, and the Department will
continue to defend this Executive Order in the courts," DOJ said in a
statement Wednesday night.
Judge points to cable news comments
After Trump initially blasted
a federal judge in Seattle on Twitter for blocking the original travel
ban, and several other federal courts halted its implementation last
month, the White House went back to the drawing board for over a month
and rewrote the ban -- hoping this one would survive legal scrutiny.
Yet certain statements made by Trump's senior advisers have come back to bite the administration in court.
In
the ruling, Watson brought up specific statements made by the President
and Stephen Miller, one of his top policy advisers and a reported
architect of the original order, in cable news interviews.
Trump
made plain his opposition to Islam in an interview with CNN's Anderson
Cooper last year, asserting: "I think Islam hates us."
Cooper
asked then-candidate Trump in the interview to clarify if he meant
Islam as a whole or just "radical Islam," to which Trump replied, "It's
very hard to separate. Because you don't know who's who."
The
judge cited this interview as an example of the "religious animus"
behind the executive order and quoted Trump telling Cooper: "We can't
allow people coming into this country who have this hatred of the United
States."
Likewise, the decision
cited an interview Miller had on Fox News following the legal struggles
of the first executive order last month, which the legal opponents of
the ban have emphasized repeatedly.
In
a February interview, Miller downplayed any major differences the new
executive order would have from the first and said it would be
"responsive to the judicial ruling" holding it up and have "mostly minor
technical differences."
"Fundamentally, you're still going to have the same basic policy outcome for the country," Miller added.
"These
plainly-worded statements, made in the months leading up to and
contemporaneous with the signing of the Executive Order, and, in many
cases, made by the Executive himself, betray the Executive Order's
stated secular purpose," Watson wrote.
"Any
reasonable, objective observer would conclude, as does the court for
purposes of the instant Motion for TRO, that the stated secular purpose
of the Executive Order is, at the very least, 'secondary to a religious
objective' of temporarily suspending the entry of Muslims," he added.
Changes not enough, judge says
While
Watson signaled that this temporary freeze of the travel ban may not
last forever, he nevertheless concluded that the changes made between
the first and second versions of the travel ban weren't enough.
"Here,
it is not the case that the Administration's past conduct must forever
taint any effort by it to address the security concerns of the nation,"
he wrote. "Based upon the current record available, however, the Court
cannot find the actions taken during the interval between revoked
Executive Order No. 13,769 and the new Executive Order to be 'genuine
changes in constitutionally significant conditions.'"
Immigration advocates applauded the ruling immediately.
"The
Constitution has once again put the brakes on President Trump's
disgraceful and discriminatory ban. We are pleased but not surprised by
this latest development and will continue working to ensure the Muslim
ban never takes effect," said ACLU attorney Omar Jadwat, who argued for
the case for the challengers in Maryland federal court earlier on
Wednesday.
The Justice Department has yet to indicate its next legal steps.
Federal
judges in several states, including Maryland and Washington state, are
also in the process of evaluating challenges to the new travel ban, but
may defer ruling in light of the nationwide ruling in Hawaii.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
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