Tag: Trump

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Law

Most Americans do not support Trump’s stance on immigration

President Trump is losing his battle over immigration in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion.

Six-in-ten Americans say immigrants strengthen the country because of their hard work and talents, compared with 27% who say immigrants are a burden because they take jobs, housing and health care, a survey published in December by the Pew Research Center shows.

The share of Americans who regard immigrants as more of a strength than a burden reached its highest level in more than 20 years, the survey found.

Support for immigrants among Americans runs counter to policies pursued by the president, who wants to build a wall along the southern border, round up and deport people who are in the country without documentation, and ban travel to the U.S. from six predominantly Muslim countries. A series of federal courts have blocked the White House from enforcing the ban after concluding that it disfavors Islam in violation of the the First Amendment.

Still, attitudes toward immigration differ along party lines, which may explain why Trump returns repeatedly to the topic. Though 82% of Democrats think immigrants strengthen the country (13% say they’re a burden), 44% of Republicans say immigrants are a burden, compared with 39% of Republicans who say immigrants strengthen the country, Pew found.

Immigration also divides the GOP along demographic lines. More than half (51%) of Republicans with a college education say immigrants strengthen the country, compared with 34% who say they’re a burden. In the 2016 election, two-thirds (67%) of white voters without a college degree backed Trump, compared with 28% who supported Hillary Clinton – the largest margin among whites without a college degree in exit polls since 1980.

Among Democrats, wide majorities of all groups within the party say immigrants strengthen the country.

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Law

The Fourth Circuit’s ruling against the Trump travel ban shows that campaigns also have consequences

President Trump’s halt to visits to the United States by people from six majority-Muslim countries excludes people from the United States based on their religious beliefs in violation of the First Amendment, the Fourth Circuit ruled  on Thursday in yet another rebuke to the White House over the constitutionality of its travel ban.

The executive order that enshrines the ban “speaks with vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination,” Chief Judge Roger Gregory wrote on behalf of 10 of his colleagues at the outset of a 67-page opinion published Thursday by the court’s majority.

The ruling means that an order by a district judge in Maryland that blocks implementation of the ban nationwide will remain in effect pending a determination by the Supreme Court, to which the administration said it would appeal. A ruling by the Ninth Circuit, which also is weighing the travel ban’s constitutionality, is expected shortly.

Words matter

In support of its conclusion that the travel ban disfavors Islam, the court relied on a series of statements that the president and his surrogates uttered before and after the election. They range from a statement in December 2015 by Trump that called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” to statements by the president in January that his order aimed to promote Christianity, to comments in February by White House adviser Stephen Miller that the revised order reflects “the same basic policy outcome for the country” as the order it replaced.

Those statements, together with “the post hoc nature of the national security rationale” and evidence from national security agencies that a revised version of the travel ban signed in March by Trump would have no effect on national security persuaded the court that the administration’s leaning on national security “was provided in bad faith, as a pretext for [the order’s] religious purpose,” Gregory wrote.

Despite the urging of the government, the majority refused to disregard statements by Trump solely because he uttered them as a candidate. “The campaign statements here are probative of purpose because they are closely related in time, attributable to the primary decisionmaker, and specific and easily connected to the challenged action,” said Gregory, who declined to adopt “a bright-line rule against considering campaign statements” and said the court would continue to review such statements case-by-case.

The challengers “have seriously called into question whether the stated reason for” the travel ban was provided in good faith, noted the majority, citing a concurrence by Justice Kennedy in a ruling two years ago by the Supreme Court that suggests courts should look in such instances behind the reasons the government gives to support its actions.

In dissent, Judge Paul Niemeyer rejected the majority’s reliance on campaign statements, which are “often short-hand for larger ideas; they are explained, modified, retracted, and amplified as they are repeated and as new circumstances and arguments arise,” wrote Niemeyer. “The Supreme Court surely will shudder at the majority’s adoption of this new rule that has no limits or bounds — one that transforms the majority’s criticisms of a candidate’s various campaign statements into a constitutional violation.”

We may be about to find out.

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Law

Judge orders White House to turn over Giuliani ‘Muslim ban’ memo

In their rulings blocking President Trump’s travel ban from taking effect, at least two federal judges have cited statements by the president and his surrogates as evidence that the White House sought to prevent Muslims from visiting the U.S. in violation of the Constitution.

Among the statements is one by former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who told Fox News in January that Trump had asked him to “put a commission together” to advise on a ban and to show the president “the right way to do it legally.”

Now District Judge Victoria Roberts in Detroit has ordered the White House to turn over to the Arab American Civil Rights League and others suing to invalidate the ban a memo from Giuliani and several Trump advisers, including strategist Stephen Bannon and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, before they were in their current posts, as well as Michael Flynn, the former national security director.

“We believe these documents will show exactly how the Muslim ban that Donald Trump called for on the campaign trail turned into the executive order he issued a week after taking office,” Miriam Aukerman, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, said in a statement.

Giuliani says his comments to Fox have been misconstrued and that Trump had not asked him to formulate a ban on Muslims that could pass muster with the courts but instead asked “what can he do legally to keep the country safe.”

The commission sought to focus on “the areas of the world that create danger for us” and not religion, the former mayor said.

In a ruling in February that prevented the travel ban from taking effect, District Judge Leonie Brinkema noted that “the evidence in this record focuses on the president’s statements about a ‘Muslim ban’ and the link Giuliani established between those statements and the [executive order.]”

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Law

Boston judge’s ruling unblocking Trump travel ban highlights arguments the White House is likely to make on appeal

The Trump administration on Saturday appealed a ruling by a federal judge in Seattle that temporarily blocks a presidential order banning admission to the U.S. from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

The Department of Justice notified the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals that it will appeal the ruling. For a preview of what the government is likely to argue, we can look to Boston, where on Friday another district judge refused to extend an order that prevented the government from enforcing the travel ban.

The ruling, by District judge Nathaniel Gorton, assessed the likelihood that a group of Iranian nationals who were detained for several hours on Jan. 28 upon arrival from abroad at Boston’s Logan International Airport despite having valid visas, can prevail in court on the merits of six arguments against the travel ban.

Equal protection: The plaintiffs, who also include the global anti-poverty group Oxfam, charged that the executive order discriminates against aliens in violation of the Fifth Amendment. “There is a distinction, however, between the constitutional rights enjoyed by aliens who have entered the United States and those who are outside of it,” Gorton wrote in the 21-page ruling. The government’s decision to categorize non-resident aliens as ineligible for entry is entitled to deference by the courts, he said.

Establishment Clause: The plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the law under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits state sponsorship of religion. Though the group claimed the government’s prioritizing refugee claims by people whose religion is a minority religion in their country favors Christianity over Islam, the plaintiffs are not refugees, and therefore failed to show the type of concrete injury required to pursue a claim in federal court.

Due Process: The court rejected the plaintiffs’ challenge to the government’s refusal to admit them as a violation of the Fifth Amendment prohibition depriving someone of a legally protected interest without due process of law. “There is no constitutionally protected interest in either obtaining or continuing a visa,” Gorton wrote, noting that the plaintiffs would have a right to due process if the government initiated deportation proceedings against them.

Administrative Procedure Act: Federal law guards against rules put together sloppily, as the plaintiffs charged the administration did with the executive order. But the presidency is not an “agency” for purposes of the Administrative Procedure Act, said Gorton.

First Amendment: Oxfam did not demonstrate a likelihood of success with respect to its claim that the executive order violates the group’s First Amendment rights, Gorton said.

Potential for harm: Though the plaintiffs face the prospect of staying in the country out of fear that reentry “could prove difficult… there are public interest considerations on both sides,” Gorton wrote. “The public interest in safety and security in this ever-more dangerous world is strong as well,” said Gorton.

Gorton seemed inclined to defer to the government’s claim that the travel ban will help to protect the country, despite the government’s failure to tie visa holders from the seven countries at issue to terrorism.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents many of the plaintiffs, vowed to “keep fighting to permanently dismantle this un-American executive order.”