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Judge Blocks Trump Order on Refugees Amid Chaos and
Outcry Worldwide
By Michael D. Shear, Nicholas
Kulish and Alan Feuer | Jan. 28th, 2017
WASHINGTON — A federal judge
in Brooklyn came to the aid of scores of refugees and others who were trapped
at airports across the United States on Saturday after an executive order
signed by President Trump, which sought to keep many foreigners from entering
the country, led to chaotic scenes across the globe.
The judge’s ruling blocked
part of the president’s actions, preventing the government from deporting some
arrivals who found themselves ensnared by the presidential order. But it
stopped short of letting them into the country or issuing a broader ruling on
the constitutionality of Mr. Trump’s actions.
The high-stakes legal case
played out on Saturday amid global turmoil, as the executive order signed by
the president slammed shut the borders of the United States for an Iranian
scientist headed to a lab in Massachusetts, a Syrian refugee family headed to a
new life in Ohio and countless others across the world.
The president’s order,
enacted with the stroke of a pen at 4:42 p.m. Friday, suspended entry of all
refugees to the United States for 120 days, barred Syrian refugees
indefinitely, and blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens
of seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan,
Syria and Yemen.
The Department of Homeland
Security said that the order also barred green card holders from those
countries from re-entering the United States. In a briefing for reporters,
White House officials said that green card holders from the seven affected
countries who are outside the United States would need a case-by-case waiver to
return.
Mr. Trump — in office just a
week — found himself accused of constitutional and legal overreach by two Iraqi
immigrants, defended by the American Civil Liberties Union. Meanwhile, large
crowds of protesters turned out at airports around the country to denounce Mr.
Trump’s ban on the entry of refugees and people from seven predominantly Muslim
countries.
Lawyers who sued the
government to block the White House order said the judge’s decision could
affect an estimated 100 to 200 people who were detained upon arrival at
American airports.
Judge Ann M. Donnelly of
Federal District Court in Brooklyn, who was nominated by former President
Barack Obama, ruled just before 9 p.m. that implementing Mr. Trump’s order by
sending the travelers home could cause them “irreparable harm.” She said the
government was “enjoined and restrained from, in any manner and by any means,
removing individuals” who had arrived in the United States with valid visas or
refugee status.
The ruling does not appear to
force the administration to let in people otherwise blocked by Mr. Trump’s
order who have not yet traveled to the United States.
The judge’s one-page ruling
came swiftly after lawyers for the A.C.L.U. testified in her courtroom that one
of the people detained at an airport was being put on a plane to be deported
back to Syria at that very moment. A government lawyer, Gisela A. Westwater,
who spoke to the court by phone from Washington, said she simply did not know.
Hundreds of people waited
outside of the courthouse chanting, “Set them free!” as lawyers made their
case. When the crowd learned that Judge Donnelly had ruled in favor of the
plaintiffs, a rousing cheer went up in the crowd.
Minutes after the judge’s
ruling in New York City, another judge, Leonie M. Brinkema of Federal District
Court in Virginia, issued a temporary restraining order for a week to block the
removal of any green card holders being detained at Dulles International
Airport.
In a statement released early
Sunday morning, the Department of Homeland Security said it would continue to
enforce all of the president’s executive orders, even while complying with
judicial decisions. “Prohibited travel will remain prohibited,” the department
said in a statement, adding that the directive was “a first step towards
re-establishing control over America’s borders and national security.”
Around the nation, security
personnel at major international airports had new rules to follow, though the
application of the order appeared chaotic and uneven. Humanitarian
organizations delivered the bad news to overseas families that had overcome the
bureaucratic hurdles previously in place and were set to travel. And refugees
already on flights when the order was signed on Friday found themselves
detained upon arrival.
“We’ve gotten reports of
people being detained all over the country,” said Becca Heller, the director of
the International Refugee Assistance Project. “They’re literally pouring in by
the minute.”
Earlier in the day, at the
White House, Mr. Trump shrugged off the sense of anxiety and disarray,
suggesting that there had been an orderly rollout. “It’s not a Muslim ban, but
we were totally prepared,” he said. “It’s working out very nicely. You see it
at the airports, you see it all over.”
But to many, the government
hardly seemed prepared for the upheaval that Mr. Trump’s actions put into
motion.
There were numerous reports
of students attending American universities who were blocked from returning to
the United States from visits abroad. One student said in a Twitter post that
he would be unable to study at Yale. Another who attends the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology was refused permission to board a plane. A Sudanese
graduate student at Stanford University was blocked for hours from entering the
country.
Human rights groups reported
that legal permanent residents of the United States who hold green cards were
being stopped in foreign airports as they sought to return from funerals,
vacations or study abroad. There was widespread condemnation of the order, from
religious leaders, business executives, academics, political leaders and
others. Mr. Trump’s supporters offered praise, calling it a necessary step on
behalf of the nation’s security.
Homeland Security officials
said on Saturday night that 109 people who were already in transit to the
United States when the order was signed were denied access; 173 were stopped
before boarding planes heading to America. Eighty-one people who were stopped
were eventually given waivers to enter the United States, officials said.
Legal residents who have a
green card and are currently in the United States should meet with a consular
officer before leaving the country, a White House official, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity, told reporters. Officials did not clarify the criteria
that would qualify someone for a waiver, other than that it would be granted
“in the national interest.”
But the week-old
administration appeared to be implementing the order chaotically, with agencies
and officials around the globe interpreting it in different ways.
The Stanford student, Nisrin
Omer, a legal permanent resident, said she was held at Kennedy International
Airport in New York for about five hours but was eventually allowed to leave
the airport. Others who were detained appeared to be still in custody or sent
back to their home countries.
White House aides claimed on
Saturday that there had been consultations with State Department and homeland
security officials about carrying out the order. “Everyone who needed to know
was informed,” one aide said.
But that assertion was denied
by multiple officials with knowledge of the interactions, including two
officials at the State Department. Leaders of Customs and Border Protection and
of Citizenship and Immigration Services — the two agencies most directly
affected by the order — were on a telephone briefing on the new policy even as
Mr. Trump signed it on Friday, two officials said.
The A.C.L.U.’s legal case
began with two Iraqis detained at Kennedy Airport, the named plaintiffs in the
case. One was en route to reunite with his wife and son in Texas. The other had
served alongside Americans in Iraq for a decade.
Shortly after noon on
Saturday, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, an interpreter who worked for more than a
decade on behalf of the United States government in Iraq, was released. After
nearly 19 hours of detention, Mr. Darweesh began to cry as he spoke to reporters,
putting his hands behind his back and miming handcuffs.
“What I do for this country?
They put the cuffs on,” Mr. Darweesh said. “You know how many soldiers I touch
by this hand?”
The other man the lawyers are
representing, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, who was en route to Houston,
was released Saturday night.
Before the two men were
released, one of the lawyers, Mark Doss, a supervising attorney at the
International Refugee Assistance Project, asked an official, “Who is the person
we need to talk to?”
“Call Mr. Trump,” said the
official, who declined to identify himself.
While the judge’s ruling
means that none of the detainees will be sent back immediately, lawyers for the
plaintiffs in the case expressed concern that all those at the airports would
now be put in detention, pending a resolution of the case.
The White House said the
restrictions would protect “the United States from foreign nationals entering
from countries compromised by terrorism” and allow the administration time to
put in place “a more rigorous vetting process.” But critics condemned Mr. Trump
over the collateral damage on people who had no sinister intentions in trying
to come to the United States.
Peaceful protests began
forming Saturday afternoon at Kennedy Airport, where nine travelers had been
detained upon arrival at Terminal 7 and two others at Terminal 4, an airport
official said. Similar scenes were playing out at other airports across the
nation.
An official message to all
American diplomatic posts around the world provided instructions about how to
treat people from the countries affected: “Effective immediately, halt
interviewing and cease issuance and printing” of visas to the United States.
Internationally, confusion
turned to panic as travelers found themselves unable to board flights bound for
the United States. In Dubai and Istanbul, airport and immigration officials
turned passengers away at boarding gates and, in at least one case, ejected a
family from a flight it had boarded.
Seyed Soheil Saeedi Saravi, a
promising young Iranian scientist, had been scheduled to travel in the coming
days to Boston, where he had been awarded a fellowship to study cardiovascular
medicine at Harvard, according to Thomas Michel, the professor who was to
supervise the research fellowship.
But Professor Michel said the
visas for the student and his wife had been indefinitely suspended.
“This outstanding young
scientist has enormous potential to make contributions that will improve our
understanding of heart disease, and he has already been thoroughly vetted,”
Professor Michel wrote to The New York Times.
A Syrian family of six who
have been living in a Turkish refugee camp since fleeing their home in 2014 had
been scheduled to arrive on Tuesday in Cleveland. Instead, the family’s trip
has been called off.
“Everyone is just so
heartbroken, so angry, so sad,” said Danielle Drake, the community manager for
US Together, an agency that resettles refugees.
A Christian family of six
from Syria said in an email to Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of
Pennsylvania, that they were being detained on Saturday morning at Philadelphia
International Airport despite having legal paperwork, green cards and visas that
had been approved.
In the case of the two Iraqis
held at Kennedy Airport, the legal filings by his lawyers say that Mr. Darweesh
was granted a special immigrant visa on Jan. 20, the same day Mr. Trump was
sworn in as president.
A husband and father of
three, Mr. Darweesh arrived at Kennedy Airport with his family. Mr. Darweesh’s
wife and children made it through passport control and customs, but agents of
Customs and Border Protection detained him.
In Istanbul, during a
stopover on Saturday, passengers reported that security officers had entered a
plane after everyone had boarded and ordered a young Iranian woman and her
family to leave the aircraft.
Iranian green card holders
who live in the United States were blindsided by the decree while on vacation
in Iran, finding themselves in a legal limbo and unsure whether they would be
able to return to America.
“How do I get back home now?”
said Daria Zeynalia, a green card holder who was visiting family in Iran. He
had rented a house and leased a car, and would be eligible for citizenship in
November. “What about my job? If I can’t go back soon, I’ll lose everything.”
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