In another setback for President Donald Trump, a US federal appeals court has turned down his administration’s request to immediately restore the travel ban on citizens from seven predominantly Muslim nations that was stayed by a Washington State federal court in Seattle on Friday.
Instead, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, has asked challengers of the travel ban to respond to the Trump administration’s appeal and a counter-response by Justice Department, to be filed by Monday afternoon.
In its appeal, filed after midnight Sunday, the Justice Department said the Seattle court’s ruling “second-guesses the President’s national security judgment” and cited a 1982 Supreme Court ruling that the “power to admit or exclude aliens is a sovereign prerogative”.
“The power to expel or exclude aliens is a fundamental sovereign attribute, delegated by Congress to the executive branch of Government and largely immune from judicial control,” the Justice Department said in its brief.
It went on to say: “Unlike the President, courts do not have access to classified information about the threat posed by terrorist organizations operating in particular nations, the efforts of those organizations to infiltrate the United States, or gaps in the vetting process.”
Rejection of the administration’s plea for immediate restoration of the ban will afford refugees and citizens with valid visas from the seven targeted nations a further opportunity to enter the US till a final judicial pronouncement on the fate of Trump’s ban order.
Trump himself stepped up his Twitter attacks against Judge James Robart of the Washington State federal court in Seattle for ordering a nationwide halt to the travel ban order.
“The judge opens up our country to potential terrorists and others that do not have our best interests at heart. Bad people are very happy!” Trump angrily commented in a series of tweets on Saturday. “Because the ban was lifted by a judge, many very bad and dangerous people may be pouring into our country. A terrible decision.”
He, however, expressed confidence that his order would prevail in the final analysis. “We’ll win. For the safety of the country, we’ll win,” Trump told reporters at Mar-a-lago, his waterfront resort in Florida.
While several federal judges have granted temporary injunctions of a limited nature over the past week in response to suits by civil rights groups and individuals against the Trump order, Judge Robart was the first to grant a nationwide stay of the travel ban.