Report: New immigration order coming day after Trump speech
The Associated Press says a revised immigration ban executive order will be released on Wednesday after President Donald Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday night. Its contents will be closely watched for their constitutional implications.
The original executive order from last January is currently in limbo in the federal court system. Various reports have the Trump administration revising the original order or creating a new order to replace the old one. Those differences are important, legal watchers say, if the Justice Department pursues an appeals process up to the Supreme Court, or if a federal judge in Washington state decides to continue with arguments about a national injunction against the January 27 executive order.
President Donald Trump has said new executive order would be written to address the concerns expressed by the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court, which upheld a temporary restraining order against the original immigration ban executive order issued last month.
The original executive order directed federal agencies to issue a 90-day suspension of entry into the United States for citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The order also barred entry of all refugees into the United States for 120 days, and it barred Syrian refugees indefinitely.
Before last week, several media outlets published some details of a first version of the new executive order. The Associated Press and others said the initial draft proposed that lawful permanent residents, or green card holders, would be exempt from the executive order, as well as dual citizens. There were also reports the order would drop a provision that allows government officials to allow exemptions for “religious minorities” in countries placed on the temporary immigration ban list.
Since then, a brief draft Department of Homeland Security report, first published by the Associated Press, analyzed publicly available Justice Department information and concluded that country of origin “is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of potential terrorist activity.” (The Wall Street Journal later reported that administration officials believed the DHS analysis didn’t include other research that supported the seven-nation ban.)
On Monday, the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court said it will ask the government to file briefs, despite a Justice Department request to put appeals proceedings on hold pending a new executive order. The Seattle-based federal court of Judge James Robart, and the Virginia-based federal court of Judge Leonie Brinkema also have injunctions in place against the current executive order.
Legal experts fully expect the parties who sued the Trump administration in those jurisdictions will keep arguing that the orders are bans specifically aimed at Muslims, which would violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. The government’s lawyers have countered those arguments in various ways, arguing that immigration power lies in the hands of Congress and the President, and not the courts, and that the Immigration and Naturalization Act clearly gives the President the ability to restrict immigration as a national security measure.
