Читать книгу The Trump Presidency - Donald F. Kettl - Страница 8

A week after being sworn in, Trump issued an executive order preventing the citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States.⁷ The order was no surprise, since he had made a tough immigration stand a cornerstone of his campaign. But his order created an enormous furor—and big challenges for front-line government employees at airports.

The countries were Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan, and Yemen. Trump said that the order was part of the “extreme vetting” he had promised to prevent “radical Islamist terrorists” from entering the country. And he created a two-tier screening process, which allowed Christians and those of other religions priority in entering the country over Muslims. At a ceremony in the Pentagon to sign the order, Trump said bluntly, “We don’t want them here.” He continued, “We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas. We only want to admit those into our country who will support our country, and love deeply our people.”⁸ During the presidential campaign, Trump had repeatedly pledged to combat what he called “radical Islamic terrorism,” and he called out Hillary Clinton for refusing to use the term. The travel ban marked his first effort to make good on his campaign promise. When the president visited Saudi Arabia in May 2017, however, he did not utter the phrase.

The travel ban caused massive chaos at airports. Trump acted quickly to release the policy, but he had not warned members of his administration that the executive order was coming. Officials in the Department of Homeland Security, especially its agencies for customs and immigration, had no time to prepare—or to answer important questions about the ban. Were Muslims from these seven countries who were in airplanes, en route to the United States, banned from entering the country? (The decision: yes. Travelers were stopped in airports and put on planes back to the countries from which they had departed.) How about flight crews who were working on flights on their way to the United States when the travel ban was announced? (Yes. They could not leave the airport.) And what about those holding “green cards” (individuals from foreign countries whose backgrounds have been rigorously checked and have been given approval by the federal government to live and work in the United States on a permanent basis)? (Yes. They were not allowed to enter the country, even though they held official government documents. See Figure 2.) Adding to the confusion was the discovery by some travelers that officials at some airports were more lenient in implementing the ban than others, and some flyers changed their plans in the hope of finding an easier road through the process.

The travel ban fueled an immediate rebellion. Critics pointed out that the ban singled out particular countries on the grounds of one particular religion. They argued that the ban created enormous chaos, especially for those ranging from college students to technology workers, who already had permission to be in the country. In Seattle, Washington state attorney general Bob Ferguson, joined by the state of Minnesota, filed suit to block Trump’s executive order. U.S. District Senior Judge James Robart agreed with Ferguson’s argument that the travel ban was unconstitutional and issued a restraining order, which applied across the country. Robart found that the president’s action inflicted harm on the states’ residents, “in areas of employment, education, business, family relations, and freedom to travel,” and that the order violated legal requirements that immigration laws be applied uniformly.⁹

Figure 2 Sample Green Card

Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, https://www.uscis.gov/greencard

Robart’s decision infuriated the White House, and Trump vowed to appeal. The Justice Department argued that the president had broad authority to protect the nation’s borders and that the executive order, therefore, was legal. Critics countered that the order was a thinly veiled effort to exclude Muslims from the country. Press Secretary Sean Spicer countered, “It’s not a Muslim ban. It’s not a travel ban.” Rather, he said, “It’s a vetting system to keep America safe.”¹⁰ But Trump’s own tweets undercut the argument the administration was trying to fashion (see Figure 3). The Nin^th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld the Robart decision. (In the federal court system, district court judges sit at the first level. Decisions made by them can be appealed to the circuit court—judges used to “ride circuit” to hear cases where litigants contested decisions of lower courts. Appeals of decisions made in federal circuit courts go to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington.)

Figure 3 Trump Tweets about “Ban” (January 30, 2017)

President Donald J. Trump/Twitter

The administration ultimately but quietly concluded it could not win an appeal of this decision to the Supreme Court and spent several weeks redrafting the executive order. On March 6, Trump signed a new executive order and gave everyone ten days to prepare for its implementation.¹¹ The new order cut the list of banned countries down to six (Iraq, a long-time ally of the United States since the end of the Gulf War, was no longer included). It created a ninety-day ban for issuing travel visas from those nations. And, in an effort to build a stronger case, the order laid out an extensive argument about why national security considerations made it necessary.

The changes did not satisfy the administration’s critics, however, who raced back to federal courts to stop it. District judges in Hawaii, Washington, and Maryland all issued orders to stop the execution of the order. They each found that the new order risked disrupting families, commerce, and education. The judge in Hawaii found that “a reasonable, objective observer . . . would conclude that the Executive Order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion.”¹² The administration’s attorneys had invested great effort in drafting the new executive order to sidestep the objections to the January order. In particular, they worked to wring out hints that there were religious roots to the order and they tried to strengthen the national security arguments. But the judges looked at Trump’s words and tweets, in the campaign and while in office, and concluded that the order violated two basic principles: it was directed, they concluded, at specific countries, instead of at particular national security problems; and it was focused on a particular religion, in violation of constitutional protections of freedom of religion. That, they concluded, continued to make the order an unconstitutional ban.