https://www.voanews.com/a/justice-department-asks-sumpreme-court-to-uphold-refugee-ban/4024197.htmlSeptember 11, 2017
The U.S. Supreme Court has issued a temporary order allowing the Trump administration to maintain its restrictive policy on refugees while the court considers challenges to the travel ban.
Justice Anthony Kennedy issued the temporary order Monday. It was expected to remain in effect while the full court takes up the matter, likely within a matter of days.
Had the Supreme Court not acted, an appeals court decision lifting part of the ban on refugees would have gone into effect on Tuesday. If there further challenges to the refugee ban, Kennedy said, they should be filed to the nation's highest court by noon on Tuesday.
The Trump administration made an emergency application to the Supreme Court Monday, asking for a stay on an earlier ruling by an appeals court, which effectively reinstated a 120-day ban on entry to the United States by almost all refugees. The lower court ruled last week that refugees could enter the country if a U.S.-based resettlement agency agreed to accept their cases.
The forthcoming ruling by the nine justices of the full Supreme Court could decide the fate of up to 24,000 refugees.
If the decision goes against the refugees and their advocates, “We will fight it,” said Neal Katyal, a lawyer involved in defending would-be refugees and other travelers blocked from coming to the U.S. by President Trump's executive orders.
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Trump just asked supreme ct to reverse Ct of appeals muslim ban decn last week,claiming grandmothers&refugees natl Sec risk.We will fight it
11:34 AM - Sep 11, 2017
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In Monday's court filing, the Justice Department said the pending appellate court ruling “will disrupt the status quo and frustrate orderly implementation of the (presidential) order's refugee provisions.”
Federal attorneys did not seek any immediate action Monday against a separate part of last the ruling issued last Thursday by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The lower court said Trump's ban on travelers from six Muslim-majority countries should not apply to the grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins of legal U.S. residents.
Latest twist
Court action this week marked the latest twist in the prolonged legal battle over the president's immigration policies.
Just after taking office in late January, President Trump issued an executive order that would have blocked nearly all refugee arrivals. After court challenges that stymied his plan, the president issued an amended version of his order in March that barred travelers from Iran, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen for 90 days, a move Trump argued was needed to prevent terrorist attacks.
The Supreme Court ruled in June that the federal government could exclude prospective refugees who did not have a “bona fide” relationship to people or entities in the United States, prompting litigation over the meaning of that phrase.
Resettlement agencies argued that their commitment to provide services for specific refugees should count as a "bona fide" relationship. The Trump administration said it should not, meaning such refugees would be barred.
Apart from the question of what constitutes “bona fide” relationships, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in October about whether Trump's travel ban discriminates against Muslims, in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
By the numbers
As lower courts and the Supreme Court weighed in on the travel and refugee bans in recent months, the U.S. refugee program has lurched from an ambitious projection of 110,000 arrivals for the year, to just a few hundred arrivals a week. Through the end of the fiscal year, September 30, fewer than 52,000 will have entered the United States during the previous 12 months — a population close to Trump's stated desire to cap arrivals at 50,000.
The administration is expected to announce in the coming weeks what the maximum number of refugee arrivals for the coming fiscal year will be.
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