Judge limits enforcement of Trump's immigration order


A federal judge on Saturday evening issued an emergency stay temporarily and partially preventing the enforcement of President Trump's executive order banning visitors from seven Mideast nations. "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 U.S. soil," said Lee Gelernt of the ACLU, which worked on the case.
The decision specifically applies to people, like the two Iraqi men detained at the airport in New York City, who have valid visas and were already arriving or in transit to the United States when the order was issued. It does not block the 90-day ban's broader enforcement against passport holders from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia who did not acquire travel papers before the order was issued.
Similar rulings were later handed down in Massachusetts, Virginia, and Washington state. The Department of Homeland Security indicated it will comply with the orders, and both Iraqi men in New York have been released.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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