Image 01 Image 03

Trump Immigration Tag

The federal government has filed for an emergency stay [full embed at bottom of post] with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to stay a temporary restraining order issued by the District Court for the Western District of Washington (Seattle). For background, see our earlier post, Absurd Fed Ct TRO halts enforcement of entire Executive Order on visas, refugees. In the past day, visa holders from the 7 high risk nations subject to the EO have flooded into the U.S. trying to beat the court clock for an appellate stay.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and State Department have announced officials will suspend "any and all actions" over the executive order President Donald Trump signed to halt immigration from seven countries. Trump signed the order so the government could put together a better vetting process to weed out terrorists. From The Hill:
“At the earliest possible time, the Department of Justice intends to file an emergency stay of this order and defend the President’s Executive Order, which is lawful and appropriate,” spokesperson Gillian Christensen said in a statement, as first reported by BuzzFeed News.

A federal court in the Western District of Washington in Seattle last night effectively stripped the Trump administration of its power to determine the parameters of who may enter the country. For my prior analysis of how the EO has been mischaracterized by opponents as a "Muslim Ban" and in other ways, see these prior posts: You can read the Motion for a TRO in the Seattle case, the government's Opposition, and the Court Order at the links. The Court Order also is embedded in at the end of this post.

In his pre-presidential life, Trump was famous for saying, "You're fired!" to people on his TV reality show. But Trump's firing of acting AG Sally Yates was no reality show. In real life, an AG advises a president on the law, but if that AG refuses to enforce an order that has been "approved as to form and legality by the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel," then a likely consequence would be that the AG could be fired. The NY Times reports Yates' motivation this way:
Ms. Yates, like other senior government officials, was caught by surprise by the executive order and agonized over the weekend about how to respond, two Justice Department officials involved in the weekend deliberations said. Ms. Yates considered resigning but she told colleagues she did not want to leave it to her successor to face the same dilemma.
But I would imagine that Ms. Yates understood that her successor would almost certainly face the same dilemma, whether Yates resigned or was fired. And although I grant that Yates and other government officials may indeed have been surprised by the speed of Trump's executive order, if they were surprised by the content of the order then they hadn't been paying much attention to Trump's campaign.

I appeared Monday night, January 30, 2017, on BBC World News hosted by Mike Embley. The topic was Trump's immigration Executive Order. We didn't talk about all the provisions, just the 90 day delay on visa entry from 7 majority Muslim nations. You can find many of my arguments in my prior post, Most claims about Trump’s visa Executive Order are false or misleading.

Acting Attorney General Sally Yates was fired by President Donald Trump after she instructed the Department of Justice not to defend the recently signed executive order issuing a moratorium on immigration from seven countries presenting significant terror threats.
Taking action in an escalating crisis for his 10-day-old administration, Mr. Trump declared that Sally Q. Yates had “betrayed” the administration, the White House said in a statement. The president appointed Dana J. Boente, United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, to serve as acting attorney general until Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama is confirmed.

We have seen this picture before. A political position by the Department of Justice which abandons its obligation to defend a law or action of the government, as in the Defense of Marriage Act, in court. The issue is not that personally DOJ attorneys have to agree with the law, or action of the government, but that DOJ is the government's attorney and needs to provide the best representation possible. In the DOMA case, the House of Representatives had to go out and find private counsel. That is happening again with regard to Trump's Executive Order on visas and refugees, according to multiple reports.

As the prof so clearly explained, the progressive outrage at President Trump's refugee executive order is rooted in lies, more lies, and . . . yes, still more lies (the partial stay not withstanding as most of the EO stands).  Not content with their failed Occupy, BLM, and "women's march," they are now organizing to disrupt travel and otherwise make complete . . . erm, spectacles of themselves.  After all, nothing turns public opinion quite as quickly as loud, obnoxious, mis- and ill-informed lefties clogging up one's travel plans. The protesters, protesting President Trump's non-existent "Muslim ban," swarmed airports in Democrat strongholds on the coasts.

(ORDER added at bottom of post) A federal court in Brooklyn, NY, issued a temporary stay against enforcement of one aspect of Trump's Executive Order on visas and refugees. The suit was brought by the ACLU on behalf of two detained men seeking to prevent being sent back to Iraq. The Judge ordered a halt to removals of persons detained in the U.S. under the Executive Order. The lawsuit did not seek to challenge other aspects of the Executive Order.

Yesterday Donald Trump signed an Executive Order on refugees and visa entry procedures. You should read the actual EO, because most of the media and leftist pundits either have not or are lying if they have. There are some stark policy differences about immigration and refugees over which people can disagree -- those were argued at length during the election season. But the hyperbole and frenzy being exhibited in the media and by leftist pundits is hyperbole at best, fakery and lying at worst.

Miami Mayor Carlos Gimenez has ordered municipal jails to comply with President Trump's recent Executive Order which reinforces federal immigration regulations and laws. In an interview with Fox and Friends Friday morning, Mayor Gimenez said, ""When the president (Donald Trump) issued his executive order, he just put an exclamation point for me on that issue. It really was a no-brainer. It's a $52,000 a year issue for Miami-Dade, so we will now go back to our 2014 policy that we will honor the detention requests regardless of the fact that the government says they'll pay for it."

In a live interview on today's Morning Joe, Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico, explicitly compared President Trump to "Hitler," and the Republican part to the "Nazi party." He did so in response to a request for clarification from Willie Geist, who noted that yesterday Fox had said: "when I saw [the] gathering of the Republican party retreat, Trump being there reminded me of Hitler addressing the Nazi party."

Question for Cokie Roberts: how many refugees admitted into the US during WWII went on to commit mass-murder terrorist acts in our country? The question arises because on today's Morning Joe, Cokie contended that shutting out Syrian refugees would be like "shutting the Jews out during World War II." Roberts made her remark in the context of claiming that the plans President Trump has announced are "extremely dangerous for the United States of America."

Now that Barack Obama's farewell speech is over, and there is less that 10 days until the inauguration, speculation is beginning about the actions that Donald Trump will take in his first 100 days in office. Doubtless, immigration will be on the top of his task list. Alan Gomez, immigration reporter for USA Today, notes that Trump will have broad presidential powers in dealing with "sanctuary cities".
Trump will be armed with a range of powerful options, including federal lawsuits and the power to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in grants that states and cities rely on.

As Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Lindsey Graham (R[?]-SC) rush to make Obama's Dreamer executive order (EO) law, cat fights are erupting on Twitter regarding immigration and Trump's intentions in this regard. In 2010, the DREAM Act failed in the Senate, so Obama picked up his pen and his phone and, by EO, made it happen.  Now, Republicans are working again with Democrats to revive the failed bill . . . they hope before Obama leaves office, though this is highly unlikely. The Hill reports:
Democratic and Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are working on legislation that would limit deportations if President-elect Donald Trump repeals President Obama’s executive orders on illegal immigration.