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Trump Immigration Tag

Hawaii has it out for Trump's attempt to curb oft-exploited visas to the U.S. issued in well-established state sponsors of terror. For the third time, a federal judge in Hawaii has approved a request for a temporary restraining order, putting Trump's latest travel executive order on hold.

We previously wrote how the U.S. Supreme Court was likely to dismiss the two Travel Order cases before it, one from the 4th Circuit (via Maryland District Court) and one from the 9th Circuit (via Hawaii District Court) on grounds of mootness. Both of those cases went against Trump. The 4th Circuit case became moot in late September because the Travel Order at issue (Travel Order No. 2) expired. In this context, mootness means there no longer is an actual case and controversy (a constitutional requirement for federal courts) to be decided by the court, because the Travel Order expired by its own terms.

When Trump rolled out a new Permanent Travel Order last night, I noted that there was a substantial question whether this rendered the pending Supreme Court case as to Trave Order No. 2 moot:
So what happens to the pending Supreme Court case? It seems that so much of the case as sought an injunction against Travel Order No. 2 is moot, meaning there’s nothing left to enjoin. I’d have to dig deeper into the pleadings to know if the entire case goes away, but it seems that much of it will.
The Supreme Court just posted an Order requesting briefing specifically on the question of mootness, and canceling the scheduled October 5 oral argument:

It seems like ancient history, but the original and replacement Travel Orders were meant to be temporary, to provide time for a security review. Those Orders were demagogued as "Muslim bans" when they clearly were not. They applied to the seven highest risk countries for terrorist visa infiltration as identified by the Obama Department of Homeland Security. What ensued were outrageous lower and appeals court decisions against the Travel Orders that read frequently like political manifestos.

Officers arrested three Democratic congressmen outside of Trump Tower during a protest against President Donald Trump's policies on immigration. From Fox News:
Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva‏, Illinois Rep. Luis Gutiérrez and New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat were taken into custody by police, according to Grijalva’s campaign Twitter account and a Gutiérrez aide.

Friday, a federal judge granted Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel his request for an injunction on a Justice Department advisory. In March, Attorney General Jeff Sessions held a press conference where he reiterated current federal regulations requiring local law enforcement officials to communicate with federal officials on certain immigration matters. Failure to do so, he explained, could result in loss of federal funding. Last month, Emanuel requested an injunction on DOJ policy.

Late Wednesday night, Democrats Sen. Schumer and White House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced they'd reached a deal with Trump on DACA and that funding for Trump's campaign cornerstone, the border wall, was not part of the agreement, though they'd agreed to include some form of beefed up border security. Trump and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders both denied any deal was made.

Yesterday Justice Kennedy issued a temporary stay of the 9th Circuit's ruling as to refugees, whose entry is put on hold under the Trump Travel Order No. 2. Today the full Supreme Court granted the stay:
The application for stay of mandate presented to Justice Kennedy and by him referred to the Court is granted, and the issuance of the mandate of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in case No. 17-16426 is stayed with respect to refugees covered by a formal assurance, pending further order of this Court.

Earlier this week, Professor Jacobson reported that 14 states were suing the Trump administration for the phasing out of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (aka, DACA). Legal Insurrection fans may have been a bit surprised that California was not listed among those states. It appears that our state's officials were simply holding out to file one of their own, which is in keeping with the war they have apparently declared on President Trump.

Thursday night, the 9th Circuit Appellate Court struck another blow to Trump's second, scaled down travel order. The latest, in this unnecessarily long and drawn out saga, is the 9th Circuit's opinion allowing just about every family member of foreign nationals receiving visitor benefits exemption from the president's travel order which took aim at countries known to be state sponsors of terror (Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen).

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, in a Facebook live event, announced that New York and 14 other states plus the District of Columbia have filed a Complaint attempting to halt the phasing out of the DACA program as announced yesterday by U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions. The Complaint (pdf.) is embedded below.