Just after midnight on Sunday the US Justice Department moved for an emergency stay of a sweeping decision that temporarily halted enforcement of President Donald Trump’s travel ban nationwide, saying in a strongly-worded filing that blocking the travel ban “harms the public” and “second-guesses the President’s national security judgment.”
The legal battle surrounds a Friday decision by a federal district court judge in Seattle who halted the implementation of several key provisions of Trump’s executive order. Trump’s policy banned foreign nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US for 90 days, suspended all refugee entry to the US for 120 days and indefinitely suspended entry for Syrian refugees.
The thrust of the government’s argument in Sunday’s emergency motion filed in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is that US District Court Judge James Robart’s ruling goes against “the considered judgment of Congress that the President should have the unreviewable authority to suspend the admission of any class of aliens.”
The three judges on the Ninth Circuit who will likely hear the case — assuming no one has to step aside over any conflicts — are: Judge William Canby, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter; Richard Clifton, who was appointed by George W. Bush; and Michelle Friedland, a President Barack Obama appointee.
Robart, a Bush appointee sitting in the Western District of Washington, ruled Friday that the states that filed the lawsuit, Washington and Minnesota, “have met their burden of demonstrating that they face immediate and irreparable injury as a result of the signing and implementation of the executive order.”
Robart went on to explain that Trump’s executive order adversely affects “residents in areas of employment, education, business, family relations, and freedom to travel.”
When the President was asked at a gala in Florida whether he was confident his administration would prevail in the appeal, Trump replied, “We’ll win. For the safety of the country, we’ll win.”
On Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security announced it had suspended “any and all” actions to implement the immigration order and would resume standard inspections of travelers, as it did prior to the signing of the travel ban.
This story has been updated to add details about the appeals process.