The ACLU has announced an immediate lawsuit filed against the Trump administration for their illegal executive order banning Muslims from 7 countries from entering the United States.
The ACLU discussed the plaintiffs in their case, “The American Civil Liberties Union and other legal organizations today filed a lawsuit on behalf of individuals subject to President Trump’s Muslim ban. The lead plaintiffs have been detained by the U.S. government and threatened with deportation even though they have valid visas to enter the United States. One plaintiff, for example, worked for the U.S. military and his life was in danger in his home country due to that relationship. The other’s family was also threatened because of perceived ties to the United States.”
Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said, “President Trump’s war on equality is already taking a terrible human toll. This ban cannot be allowed to continue.”
David J. Bier an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity explained in the The New York Times why Trump’s executive order is illegal, “Mr. Trump appears to want to reinstate a new type of Asiatic Barred Zone by executive order, but there is just one problem: The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 banned all discrimination against immigrants on the basis of national origin, replacing the old prejudicial system and giving each country an equal shot at the quotas. In signing the new law, President Lyndon B. Johnson said that “the harsh injustice” of the national-origins quota system had been ‘abolished.’”
The power that Trump claims to have to ban Muslims comes from a 1952 law that Congress restricted in 1965. Trump does not have the power to do what he did, and courts have held for decades that this sort of executive action is unconstitutional because it circumvents Congress.
Legal precedent suggests that the ACLU lawsuit will be successful. The problem is that it could take months or years for this issue to be resolved in the courts. There are real legal immigrants who are being denied entry into the country right now. Families are being torn apart. Lives are being destroyed as people who went through the system legally and got their green cards are being denied reentry into the country.
Trump’s executive order created a moral and a constitutional crisis that is harming the fabric of our country.