(Julius Motal / Gothamist)
For the second time in as many days, a federal judge blocked President Donald Trump’s third iteration of a travel ban.
U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland issued a temporary injunction stopping much of the order from going into effect while litigation proceeds. It follows an even more sweeping injunction issued by a federal judge in Hawaii on Tuesday.
The revised ban, which was slated to take effect today, dropped Iraq and Sudan from the list while adding North Korea, Chad, and some Venezuelans and making it indefinite. In total it included some form of restriction on travelers from eight countries: Iran, Yemen, Syria, Libya, North Korea, Chad, Venezuela, and Somalia.
Trump’s first order caused panic at airports before being struck down by the courts. Trump then signed a new ban in early March which was quickly suspended by the same courts in Hawaii and Maryland. The Supreme Court partially reinstated the order, but said it couldn’t be enforced against travelers who have a “bona fide” relationship with someone in the U.S. A challenge was then rendered moot by the third iteration of the ban.
Regarding the latest order, there’s “no evidence, even in the form of classified information submitted to the Court, showing an intelligence-based terrorism threat justifying a ban on entire nationalities,” Chuang wrote, according to the Washington Post, arguing that the new ban bore a strong resemblance to Trump’s earlier descriptions of the Muslim ban. “The ‘initial’ announcement of the Muslim ban, offered repeatedly and explicitly through President Trump’s own statements, forcefully and persuasively expressed his purpose in unequivocal terms.”
The judge in Hawaii, Derrick K. Watson, wrote that Trump’s latest attempt at a travel ban “suffers from precisely the same maladies as its predecessor.”
Rachel Sadon