President Trump: San Francisco Appeals court rules on the legality of his travel ban in hours
A U.S. appeals court in San Francisco said it will rule by the end of business on Thursday regarding President Donald Trump’s travel restrictions for people from seven Muslim-majority countries.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is reviewing a temporary suspension of Trump’s travel ban issued by a federal judge in Seattle last week.
During a more than hour-long oral argument on Tuesday, the three-judge panel pressed a government lawyer whether the Trump administration’s national security argument was backed by evidence that people from the seven countries posed a danger.
Judge Richard Clifton, a George W. Bush appointee, posed equally tough questions for an attorney representing Minnesota and Washington states, which are challenging the ban. Clifton asked if a Seattle judge’s suspension of Trump’s policy was “overbroad.”
Trump’s Jan. 27 order barred travellers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering for 90 days and all refugees for 120 days, except refugees from Syria, whom he would ban indefinitely.
Trump, who took office on Jan. 20, has defended the measure, the most divisive act of his young presidency, as necessary for national security.
The order sparked protests and chaos at U.S. and overseas airports. Opponents also assailed it as discriminatory against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution and applicable laws.
A federal judge in Seattle suspended the order last Friday and many travellers who had been waylaid by the ban quickly moved to travel to the United States while it was in limbo.
August Flentje, representing the Trump administration as special counsel for the U.S. Justice Department, told the appellate panel that “Congress has expressly authorized the president to suspend entry of categories of aliens” for national security reasons.
“That’s what the president did here,” Flentje said at the start of the oral argument conducted by telephone and live-streamed on the internet.