Trump's Revised Travel Order Faces Test In Appeals Court

RICHMOND, VA — President Donald Trump's revised travel ban went in front of a federal appeals court in Virginia Monday, the first of two legal challenges relating to the order to be taken up in courts this month.

The revised executive order bans nationals of six majority Muslim countries from obtaining new visas to enter the United States for 90 days and suspends the U.S. refugee program for 120 days. Part of the order, suspending new visas to citizens of majority Muslim countries, was blocked by a judge in Maryland, and the Department of Justice will argue in front of the appeals court to lift the injunction put in place by the judge in Maryland, U.S. District Court Judge Theodore D. Chuang.

Chuang's ruling came after a separate judge in Hawaii blocked the entirety of the revised travel order. In granting the injunction, Chuang ruled that the plaintiffs are likely to establish that the temporary suspension of visas to nationals of Iran, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Sudan, violates the Establishment Cause, which forbids the federal government from favoring or condemning a particular religion.

"Here, nationwide relief is appropriate because this case involves an alleged violation of the Establishment Clause by the federal government manifested in immigration policy with nationwide effect," Chuang wrote.

Instead of having a traditional three-judge panel, all 14 judges on the court reviewed the case Monday.

In court Monday, Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey B. Wall was asked repeatedly by the judges about statements made by Trump during the campaign where he talked about a Muslim ban. As the Washington Post reports, Wall argued that the ban did not affect Muslim countries other than the six mentioned in the order and the "Supreme Court has ruled in the past that in matters of immigration and national security, the president's judgement is not open to judicial second-guessing."

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson in Hawaii issued a broader injunction, blocking the order in its entirety. Watson issued his decision at 6 p.m. Eastern Time the day before the order would have gone into effect and become federal policy.

Watson's freeze on the new order explicitly prohibits "the enforcement of [the ban] in all places, including the United States, at all United States borders and ports of entry, and in the issuance of visas." An appeal against the injunction granted in Hawaii is scheduled for next week in Seattle.

According to papers filed in court, the Department of Justice said that the plaintiffs' arguments flow from a "flawed notion of Establishment Cause exceptionalism" and the challenge to the order has been labeled as a challenge to the order's "supposed anti-Muslim "message." Throughout the court filings, the DOJ asserts that the order makes no mention of religion. The filings also state that the plaintiffs' reliance on past campaign statements made by the president and his aides and the belief that those statements reflect an intent to ban Muslim immigration is irrelevant because the order does no such thing.

Several states have filed court briefs in support of the Trump administration, while on the other hand, former national security officials have field their own briefs in support of the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs in the case are Muslim U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Oral arguments on behalf of the plaintiffs will be handled by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The first attempt by Trump in January to curb immigration from nations he sees as terror-prone also failed to hold up in court.

That executive order, a more extreme version of the current one, was halted by federal judges in both Brooklyn and Seattle just one day after the president signed it — but not before creating mass confusion and chaos at airports across the U.S., as Customs and Border Protection agents began detaining immigrants and putting them on planes back to their home countries.

>>>You can listen to a live feed of the arguments in the appeals court via C-SPAN. Arguments are set to begin at 2:30 p.m.

Simone Wilson contributed to this report.

Pictured: New York City activists rallied against Trump's first ban at JFK Airport in January. Photo by Simone Wilson/Patch