Trump administration fights to keep grandparents excluded by the travel ban

A Syrian refugee with her grandson
(Image credit: Bulent Kilic/Getty Images)

When the Supreme Court approved a modified version of President Trump's much-challenged travel ban last week, it provided the order could not be used to exclude visitors from the affected Muslim-majority countries if they have "bona fide relationships" with people already in the United States. Now at issue is what counts as "bona fide relationships," a category SCOTUS did not specifically define and which the White House says does not include grandparents, aunts, and uncles of American citizens and residents.

The Department of Justice was in court Monday fighting to maintain that delineation, arguing the SCOTUS ruling should not be interpreted to allow "the broader, free-hand rules" of letting in grandparents. Pointing to established immigration law, the DOJ says close family relations that meet the Supreme Court's exemption are limited to "parent (including parent-in-law), spouse, fiancé, child, adult son or daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, sibling (whether whole or half), and step relationships." Not on the list: grandparents.

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Bonnie Kristian

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.