02/16/2017

White House to Issue New Travel Order

Stymied by court action, Trump administration investigates other routes for travel ban

After criticizing the “bad decision” he got from an appeals court panel last week, President Donald Trump said in a press conference today that he will issue a new executive order on travel next week.

A three-judge federal appeals panel last Thursday refused to reinstate Trump’s executive order that bans travelers entering the U.S. from seven mostly Muslim countries. The order, issued last month, indefinitely barred Syrian refugees from entering the United States, suspended all refugee admissions for 120 days and banned citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. for 90 days. The seven countries on the list were Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

In a unanimous ruling last week, the Ninth Circuit panel said the government “has pointed to no evidence that any alien from any of the countries named in the order has perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States.”

“Rather than present evidence to explain the need for the Executive Order, the government has taken the position that we must not review its decision at all,” the ruling said.

The administration, which had urged the panel to reinstate the ban as a matter of national security, had been silent on whether it planned to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. Given that the high court still lacks its ninth member, a 4-4 decision would leave the appeals court ruling in place.

It appears that instead of pursuing the issue through litigation, Trump will issue a new directive which he said will conform to the legal ruling handed down by the courts.

“The new order is going to be very much tailored to what I consider to be a very bad decision,” Trump said today. “We can tailor the order to that decision and get just about everything, in some ways more.”

This article was provided to OSAE by The Power of A.