After a federal judge in Hawaii ruled against President Trump’s latest travel ban, a federal judge in Maryland, U.S. District Court Judge Theodore Chuang, has now issued a second halt against the travel ban, according to Politico. According to The Washington Post, within Chuang’s 91-page order, the U.S. District Court Judge claimed that Trump’s campaign rhetoric as well as his tweets show that this latest travel ban is still an “unconstitutional Muslim ban.”
Chuang blocked the Trump administration from implementing and enforcing the new travel ban on immigrants from the banned countries that have a genuine relationship with an individual or have a professional engagement in the United States, The Washington Post reports.
This third attempt at a travel ban by the Trump administration — which would block travel from Syria, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Chad, Somalia, North Korea and Venezuela — was to be fully implemented early Wednesday morning, according to The Washington Post. As with the Hawaiian federal judge’s ruling, Chuang’s order does not prohibit the implementation of the ban on travelers from North Korea and Venezuela, Politico reports.
BREAKING: Judge Chuang enters preliminary injunction order blocking Muslim Ban 3 in IRAP v TRUMP
— Omar C. Jadwat (@OmarJadwat) October 18, 2017
According to Chuang’s order, since the travel ban blocked immigrants to the United States based on their nationality, it violated a nondiscrimination provision in the law. “To the extent that the Government might have provided additional evidence to establish that national security is now the primary purpose for the travel ban, it has not done so,” Chuang wrote. “Of course, even if such evidence was forthcoming, its value in obviating the taint of the earlier Executive Orders would be limited.”
Chuang based much of his ruling on Trump’s past rhetoric and tweets, stating that Trump solely intended to ban Muslims from the United States, and as a result, this was a conflict with the Establishment Clause, The Washington Post reports.
The Maryland federal judge wrote, according to The Washington Post, that when Trump was a presidential candidate in 2015, Trump vowed to “shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” In addition, Chaung addressed how the president reportedly said, after the second travel ban was released, that the second travel ban was only a “watered down version” and that “we ought go back to the first one and go all the way, which is what I wanted to do in the first place.”
The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017
Furthermore, according to Politico, Chuang cited a tweet in August from Trump in which the president “endorsed what appears to be an apocryphal story involving General John J. Pershing and a purported massacre of Muslims with bullets dipped in a pig’s blood, advising people to ‘study what General Pershing . . . did to terrorists when caught.’”
Chuang claimed that the president’s tweet suggested “a method hostile to Islam — shooting Muslims with bullets dipped in pig’s blood — should be used to deter future terrorism.”
Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
The Department of Justice, however, has already said that it will appeal both of the Hawaii and Maryland decisions.
According to Politico, before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning, Attorney General Jeff Sessions stood by the new travel ban, saying, “The president’s executive order is an important step in ensuring that we know who is coming into our country. The order is lawful, necessary and we are proud to defend it. ... We are confident that we will ultimately prevail.”
In response to the rulings against the latest travel ban, the White House said that the rulings “undercuts the President’s efforts to keep the American people safe and enforce minimum security standards for entry into the United States.” According to The Washington Post, the Trump administration implemented this new travel ban after conducting a review on the information necessary to vet those entering the United States, and countries that were unwilling or incapable to produce the information were placed on the banned list.
“These restrictions are vital to ensuring that foreign nations comply with the minimum security standards required for the integrity of our immigration system and the security of our Nation,” the White House said. “We are therefore confident that the Judiciary will ultimately uphold the President’s lawful and necessary action and swiftly restore its vital protections for the safety of the American people.”