The Trump administration moved aggressively on Thursday to fulfil one of the US president's most contentious campaign promises: banning entry into the United States by refugees from around the world and prohibiting most visitors from six predominantly Muslim countries.
Freed by the US Supreme Court to partly revive Donald Trump’s travel ban, administration officials said the US border would be shut to those groups unless specific individuals can prove they have close family members living in the United States or are coming to attend a university or accept a job offer.
Officials said those exceptions would be defined narrowly. In a lengthy cable sent to embassies and consulates around the world, officials said that extended family connections would not be enough to evade the president’s ban on entry. Parents, including in-laws, are considered “close family,” but grandparents are not, for instance. Stepsiblings and half-siblings will be allowed, but not nieces or nephews.
Late Thursday, the Trump administration added people who are engaged to be married, who originally were not considered to be close family members, to the list of sufficient connections. Critics immediately denounced the administration, accusing the White House of violating the Supreme Court’s directive to exempt anyone with a “bona fide” family connection to the United States. Civil rights groups vowed to challenge what they said was a renewed attempt by Mr Trump to keep Muslims out of the country.
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“It remains clear that president Trump’s purpose is to disparage and condemn Muslims,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, adding that the government’s new ban on entry “does not comport with the Supreme Court’s order, is arbitrary, and is not tied to any legitimate government purpose.”
One week after taking office, Mr Trump shut down travel from seven mostly Muslim countries, including Iraq, and blocked entry by all refugees, saying that a "pause" was necessary to evaluate the vetting of visitors from places that the government deemed dangerous.
Critics assailed that first order as a veiled attempt to make good Mr Trump’s campaign promise to impose a “Muslim ban”. After courts blocked it, the US president issued a modified order directed at six countries, not including Iraq. That order was blocked as well, with federal appeals courts ruling that it discriminated based on religion, in violation of the first amendment, and exceeded the president’s statutory authority.
Enforce
The decision Thursday by the administration to revive and aggressively enforce another version of the president’s travel ban is certain to keep the intense debate about America’s borders going into the US Supreme Court’s fall term, when the justices are scheduled to decide the legal fate of Mr Trump’s efforts to restrict entry by particular groups.
Officials said they were determined to “meet the intent of the presidential directive” within the boundaries set by the court, which issued an interim opinion when it agreed to consider the issue in its next term. Administration officials said their definition of a “family connection” was based on existing immigration law and directions from the court.
Hours before the new guidelines went into effect Thursday evening, officials predicted little of the chaos that engulfed airports in January, when the president issued his original travel ban. This time, officials said, people already booked to travel to the United States would be allowed to enter. And they made it clear that legal permanent residents were not affected by the ban.
But the administration’s newest move could prompt another wave of litigation as advocates for those trying to enter the United States ask courts to halt enforcement of the ban. Already, lawyers in Washington have asked the court to allow the entry of refugees with no “credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”
Other lawyers representing people who have been blocked from visiting the United States described the government’s actions as meanspirited and said they made unreasonable distinctions about family relations. “Allowing a US citizen to bring their Syrian mother-in-law but not their Syrian brother-in-law doesn’t make us any safer and doesn’t even really make any sense,” said Gadeir Abbas, a staff lawyer at the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Mr Trump has said his travel ban does not directly target Muslims, although the six countries on the list that the president has deemed dangerous - Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen - are majority Muslim. Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister, condemned the administration's move: "US now bans Iranian grandmothers from seeing their grandchildren, in a truly shameful exhibition of blind hostility to all Iranians," he wrote on Twitter.
For refugees fleeing civil wars and violence around the world, the administration’s action Thursday means that a 120-day ban on entry from all countries will most likely bar many of them from finding safety in the United States. As of Wednesday night, 49,009 refugees had been allowed into the United States so far this fiscal year, which ends on October 1st. Officials predicted that the new 50,000 cap would be reached by July 6th, so refugees who are planning to travel after that date will not automatically be allowed into the country. Travel arrangements for refugees beyond July 6th will not be allowed until the US state department makes an assessment, officials said.
Even after the 50,000 limit is reached, however, refugees with family ties who meet the new guidelines will be allowed into the United States, officials said. “The US government is once again unfairly changing the rules on refugees who, after fleeing for their lives, are now struggling to eat and to stay alive while they try to follow those rules,” said Mark Hetfield, president and chief executive of HIAS, a refugee and resettlement agency.
New York Times