A federal court has granted an emergency stay blocking the deportation of migrants detained at airports around the United States due to Donald Trump’s immigration ban.
The federal court for the Eastern District of New York issued the stay Saturday evening after only two of 12 refugees held at JFK airport were released, after 14 and 24 hours respectively. The ACLU had filed a petition on their behalf, but the stay is effective nationwide. Under the stay, none of the travelers held at airports across the nation can be sent back. However, the measure doesn’t mean they have to be allowed into the country – leaving them in a grey area.
Earlier on Saturday, Donald Trump defended his new immigration measures, which prompted outrage as migrants were barred from entering the United States, including families of refugees and Ivy League students.
The president denied that his executive order, which bars refugees and citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the US, was a Muslim ban.
He maintained that the ban was ‘working very nicely’ while chaos broke out in airports as migrants were stopped and some non-American citizens realized they were now barred from the country where they were studying or had lived, perhaps for years.
Trump’s comments came as migrants around the country were detained in airports because they arrived just after the executive order was signed.
A senior Homeland Security official told Reuters that roughly 375 travelers affected by the order. Out of the 375, 109 were in transit to the US and denied entry. Another 173 people were stopped by airlines from boarding an aircraft to the US. An additional 81 travelers with green cards or special immigrant visas received waivers.
It’s not a Muslim ban, but we are totally prepared,’ Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Saturday afternoon, according to The Hill.
‘It’s working out very nicely. You see it in the airports, you see it all over. It’s working out very nicely and we are going to have a very, very strict ban and we are going to have extreme vetting, which we should have had in this country for many years.’
The stay issued Saturday evening blocks the situation pending a permanent ruling. The ACLU lawyers who handled the case have also filed a motion for class certification, which means other people affected by the order will be able to benefit from the stay as part of a class action.
Judge Donnelly also ordered the government to give a list of people detained due to Trump’s order.
The measure means detained travelers cannot be deported back to their home countries, but it does not force authorities to allow them into the US. Judge Ann Donnelly ruled that sending them back would expose them to irreparable harm.
Trump’s ban affects citizens from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. The temporary stay also protects refugees with an approved case.
It is unclear what will happen to those detained. A later court date has been set for February.
It was reported shortly after the stay was issued that it wasn’t being implemented in several airports.
‘We have gotten disturbing reports that @CustomBorders is refusing to comply with the court order,’ ACLU deputy legal director Cecilia Wang tweeted. She said she had heard reports that officials were refusing to pull people from planes sending them back.
A PhD student detained at JFK was being deported back to Istanbul despite the stay, BBC Persian correspondent Bahman Kalbasi said on Twitter.
The Department of Homeland Security said early on Sunday it would comply with judicial orders not to send back detained travelers.
It said it would ‘comply with judicial orders; faithfully enforce our immigration laws, and implement President Trump’s Executive Orders to ensure that those entering the United States do not pose a threat to our country or the American people’.
Crowds of demonstrators who had gathered at airports and outside the Brooklyn courthouse let out cheers when news of the temporary stay broke.
‘I hope Trump enjoys losing. He’s going to lose so much we’re going to get sick and tired of his losing,’ ACLU national political director Faiz Shakir told Yahoo News.
The ACLU was getting ready to help between 100 and 200 people.
‘This ruling preserves the status quo and ensures that people who have been granted permission to be in this country are not illegally removed off US soil, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project Lee Gelernt, who argued the case, said.
ACLU Executive Director Anthony D Romero added: ‘Clearly the judge understood the possibility for irreparable harm to hundreds of immigrants and lawful visitors to this country.
‘Our courts today worked as they should as bulwarks against government abuse or unconstitutional policies and orders. On week one, Donald Trump suffered his first loss in court.’
The National Border Patrol Council, which represents about 18,000 border patrol staffers, previously backed Trump’s measures.
‘We fully support and appreciate President Trump’s swift and decisive action to keep the American people safe and allow law enforcement to do its job,’ the council said in a statement.
‘We applaud the three executive orders he has issued to date, and are confident they will make America safer and more prosperous. Morale amongst our agents and officers has increased exponentially since the signing of the orders. The men and women of ICE and Border Patrol will work tirelessly to keep criminals, terrorists, and public safety threats out of this country, which remains the number one target in the world – and President Trump’s actions now empower us to fulfill this life saving mission, and it will indeed save thousands of lives and billions of dollars.’
Two associate professors at the University Of Massachusetts Dartmouth told the Boston Globe early Sunday they had filed a federal lawsuit against Trump. The professors, who are both Iran citizens and Muslims, say they were held unlawfully at Logan International Airport.
Panic previously broke out after Department of Homeland Security issued a directive at 4:30 pm on Friday enforcing Trump’s executive order to close down the borders to refugees and visa holders from a list of banned Muslim-majority countries.
Trump’s order singled out Syrians by indefinitely blocking entry for anyone from that country, including those fleeing civil war.
The measure did not address the case of homegrown extremists who are already in the US, a major concern for federal law enforcement.
Reports of people being detained came from all around the US on Saturday. ‘They’re literally pouring in by the minute,’ director of the International Refugee Assistance Project Becca Heller told the New York Times.
About 50 people were held at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, USA Today reported. Fifty people were also detained at Dulles International Airport, where protesters gathered. Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and Attorney General Mark Herring have said the state could take legal action against the ban.
One Yale student said he would be unable to attend the prestigious Ivy League university. Another student from the Massachusetts Institute Of Technology said he was barred from boarding a plane.
A Stanford University student, a Sudanese national and legal permanent resident with a green card, was held for eight hours at JFK before being able to return to California.
An Iranian scientist was meant to fly to Boston to study cardiovascular medicine at Harvard but has now had his visa suspended indefinitely.
‘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 Thomas Michel, who was going to supervise the student, told The New York Times.
Up to 13 people were detained at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, KUOW reported. Eleven people were held at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Thirteen were detained at Chicago O’Hare according to the Chicago Tribune. At least 50 Iranians were held at Los Angeles International Airport, the LA Times wrote.
Two families of six from Syria were affected. One was supposed to relocate to Cleveland, Ohio, after having to flee their home in 2014. But their trip was canceled.
Another family of six from the war-torn country was detained at Philadelphia International Airport Saturday morning even though they had required legal documents and approved green cards and visas.
Plane passengers were turned away in Dubai and Istanbul, including at least one family who got ejected from a flight.
The fallout from Trump’s immigration crackdown grew on Saturday.
The visa ban sparked fear for some refugees who were already on their way to the US when the order came into effect and were detained on arrival.
Twelve refugees were held in New York City’s JFK on Friday night. Cabs at the airport went on strike for an hour from 6 pm to 7 pm to protest against the ban.
Travelers reported that police stopped allowing people without plane tickets onto the Air Train, which goes to the airport terminals, during the evening.
Governor Andrew Cuomo, however, ordered authorities to let protesters onto the Air Train, saying in a statement relayed by ABC that ‘one of the fundamental rights that is granted to the people of this country is the right to peacefully protest’.
Hameed Khalid Darweesh, one of the Iraqi refugees, was detained for 14 hours in New York and released on Saturday afternoon. The second detainee, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, was released around 7 pm on Saturday after 24 hours.
Darweesh, 53, had arrived in America on a flight from Istanbul on Friday night, just hours after Trump implemented the immigration ban.
He had worked for the US government in Iraq for 10 years as a translator, engineer and contractor and had a valid special immigration visa to relocate to America.
Alshawi, 33 – who was approved for a visa on January 11 – was flying to America to join his wife and son in Texas. ‘I’m sleepy and tired and exhausted,’ he told the New York Post after being released Saturday.
Darweesh pumped his fist in the air outside the airport following his release, as a crowd of supporters cheered him on.
‘First of all I want to thank the people that take care of me and support me. This is the humility, this is the soul of America,’ he told a crowd gathered outside the airport.
‘This is what pushed me to move – leave my country and come here. America is the land of freedom… America is the greatest nation, the greatest people in the world.’
Asked what he thought of Trump he said: ‘I don’t know. He’s a president, I’m a normal person.’
He was travelling with his wife and three children at the time but they were not detained. They were heading to Charlotte, North Carolina to start their new life in America.
Lawyers for Darweesh and another Iraqi Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, who is still detained at JFK, filed a lawsuit on Saturday morning in a bid to have them released.
The two men were on separate flights when immigration officials stopped them on Friday night and took their passports when they landed in New York.
Ten other refugees were still being held at JFK airport.
Republican lawmakers have spoken out against Trump’s immigration ban. Senator Chris Murphy tweeted: ‘To my colleagues: don’t ever again lecture me on American moral leadership if you chose to be silent today.’ He later called the emergency stay a temporary victory.
Representative Charlie Dent also spoke out against Trump’s order.
‘This is ridiculous,’ he told the Washington Post. ‘I guess I understand what his intention is, but unfortunately the order appears to have been rushed through without full consideration. You know, there are many, many nuances of immigration policy that can be life or death for many innocent, vulnerable people around the world.’
Representative Justin Amash questioned whether the measure was legal.
‘It’s not lawful to ban immigrants on basis of nationality,’ he tweeted. ‘If the president wants to change immigration law, he must work with Congress.’
Senator Ben Sasse said that Trump was right to focus on border control, but said the president’s order was is ‘too broad’.
‘If we send a signal to the Middle East that the US sees all Muslims as jihadis, the terrorist recruiters win by telling kids that America is banning Muslims and that this is America versus one religion,’ he said. ‘Our generational fight against jihadism requires wisdom.’
Earlier on Saturday, Cairo airport officials said seven US-bound migrants – six from Iraq and one from Yemen – were prevented from boarding an EgyptAir flight to New York’s JFK airport.
The officials said the seven migrants, escorted by officials from the UN refugee agency, were stopped from boarding the plane on Saturday after authorities at Cairo airport contacted their counterparts in JFK airport.
The action at Cairo airport was the first there since Trump imposed the three-month ban on refugees.
Dutch airline KLM says it had to turn away seven would-be passengers because they would no longer have been accepted into the United States.
‘We would love to bring them there. That’s not the problem. It’s just that this is what the U.S. sprang on the rest of the world – that these people are no longer welcome,’ Manel Vrijenhoek, at KLM’s press office, said.
She said the seven, who were from the seven blacklisted countries, were due to fly with KLM from different airports around the world.
In Tehran, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Iran would stop issuing new visas to US citizens in response to Trump’s ban, but that anyone already with a visa to Iran wouldn’t be turned away.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took to Twitter Saturday afternoon to say that refugees were welcome in Canada, ‘regardless of your faith’.
The Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee said there was chaos at airports and in the air following Trump’s ban with the organization already receiving calls for help from green card and other visa holders after being refused admission.
‘Visas being denied immediately. Chaos at airports and in the air. #MuslimBan will apply to green card holders attempting to return tonight,’ the ADC’s Abed Ayoub tweeted on Friday night.
Trump’s ban puts a 90-day pause on visas and immigration from seven countries including Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Libya, Yemen and Somalia.
The order also puts a 120-day ban on all refugee entries into the country and declares that refugees from Syria are not welcome until further notice.
After that period of time, refugees will be accepted only from countries that the State and Homeland Security Departments decide are safe to work with.
Iran’s foreign ministry suggested the country would limit issuing visas to American tourists in retaliation for Trump’s suspension of immigration and visas.
The official IRNA news agency carried a statement by the Iranian foreign ministry on Saturday that said Iran will resort to ‘counteraction’ to Trump’s executive order.
‘Iran, to defend the dignity of the great Iranian nation, will implement the principle of reciprocity until the removal of the insulting restriction against Iranian nationals,’ the statement read.
‘It will apply corresponding legal, consular and political actions.’
The two countries have had no diplomatic relations since 1979 when militants stormed the U.S. embassy.
Google urged its staff travelling overseas on Friday to immediately return to the U.S. if they would be affected by the order.
CEO Sundar Pichai issued a memo slamming Trump’s order saying 100 employees were affected, Bloomberg reports.
The tech company feared its employees, even though they have valid visas, would be stopped from returning to the country.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg hit out at Trump condemning his anti-immigration bans.
‘The United States is a nation of immigrants, and we should be proud of that,’ Zuckerberg said.