Feds, states square off in court over Trump travel restrictions

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) State and federal lawyers will argue before a panel of federal appellate court judges Tuesday in the pitched fight over President Donald Trump’s temporary immigration halt that could reach the Supreme Court.

The legal dispute involves two divergent views of the role of the executive branch and the court system.

The federal government maintains the president alone has the power to decide who can enter or stay in the United States, while states suing Trump say his executive order is unconstitutional.

Seattle U.S. District Judge James Robart, who on Friday temporarily blocked Trump’s order, has said a judge’s job is to ensure that an action taken by the government “comports with our country’s laws.”

The Justice Department filed a new defense of Trump’s restrictions on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim nations as a federal appeals court weighs whether to restore the administration’s executive order. The lawyers said Monday the travel restrictions was a “lawful exercise” of the president’s authority to protect national security and said Robart’s order that put the policy on hold should be overruled.

The filing with the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was the latest salvo in a high-stakes legal fight surrounding Trump’s order.

Washington state, Minnesota and other states say the appellate court should allow a temporary restraining order blocking the restrictions to stand as their lawsuit moves through the legal system.

The judges hearing the arguments – two Democrat-appointed judges and one Republican appointee – are from a randomly assigned panel.

The appeals court over the weekend refused to immediately reinstate the restrictions, and lawyers for Washington and Minnesota argued anew on Monday that any resumption would “unleash chaos again,” separating families and stranding university students.

The Justice Department responded that the president has clear authority to “suspend the entry of any class of aliens” to the U.S. in the name of national security. It said the halt on immigration, which temporarily suspends the country’s refugee program and immigration from seven countries with terrorism concerns, was intended “to permit an orderly review and revision of screening procedures to ensure that adequate standards are in place to protect against terrorist attacks.”

The challengers were asking “courts to take the extraordinary step of second-guessing a formal national security judgment made by the president himself pursuant to broad grants of statutory authority,” the Justice Department wrote.

The Seattle judge’s ruling triggered a Twitter rant by the president.

On Sunday, Trump tweeted, “Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!”

Whatever the appeals court decides, either side could ask the Supreme Court to intervene.

It could prove difficult, though, to find the necessary five votes at the high court to undo a lower court order; the Supreme Court has been at less than full strength since Justice Antonin Scalia’s death a year ago. The last immigration case that reached the justices ended in a 4-4 tie.

How and when a case might get to the Supreme Court is unclear. The halt on immigration itself is to expire in 90 days, meaning it could run its course before a higher court takes up the issue. Or the administration could change it in any number of ways that would keep the issue alive.

After Robart’s ruling, the State Department quickly said people from the seven countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen – could travel to the U.S. if they had valid visas.

On Monday, a graduate student who had traveled to Libya with her 1-year-old son to visit her sick mother and attend her father’s funeral was back in Fort Collins, Colorado, after having been stopped in Jordan on her return trip. She was welcomed with flowers and balloons by her husband and other children.

Syrian immigrant Mathyo Asali said he thought his life was “ruined” when he landed at Philadelphia International Airport on Jan. 28 only to be denied entry to the United States. Asali, who returned to Damascus, said he figured he’d be inducted into the Syrian military. He was back on U.S. soil Monday.

“It’s really nice to know that there’s a lot of people supporting us,” Asali told Gov. Tom Wolf, who greeted the family at a relative’s house in Allentown.

States challenging these restrictions have been joined by technology companies, who have said it makes it more difficult to recruit employees. National security officials under President Barack Obama have also come out against it.