U.S. Supreme Court on Monday issued a short-term order restoring President Donald Trump’s ban on thousands of refugees seeking entry to the country.
In an order signed by Justice Anthony Kennedy on Monday, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the part of the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling that barred the government from prohibiting refugees that have formal assurances from resettlement agencies or are in the US Refugee Admissions Programme from entering Washington.
A federal appeals court ruled last week that the administration must temporarily admit refugees if a resettlement agency had promised that it would provide basic services for them. That decision was set to take effect Tuesday, and as many as 24,000 refugees have received such assurances, the administration said in papers filed with the high court.
The ruling on refugees “will disrupt the status quo and frustrate orderly implementation of the order’s refugee provisions that this court made clear months ago could take effect,” acting U.S. Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall wrote.
“The Ninth Circuit’s decision renders the June 26 stay functionally inoperative,” Acting Solicitor General Jeff Wall argued in the filing Monday. “It makes no sense to exempt from….the Order the roughly 24,000 refugees for whom assurances exist, based on the happenstance that they had reached a later stage of the administrative process in which the government routinely obtains assurances.”
The Supreme Court handed Trump a partial win in June when it allowed the The Trump administration’s travel ban blocks travellers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the US for 90 days.
“The Trump administration has ended its odd and ill-advised quest to ban grandmas from the country,” Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin said on Monday.
The broader question of whether the travel ban discriminates against Muslims in violation of the US Constitution, as lower courts previously ruled, will be argued before the Supreme Court on Oct. 10.
The administration said Monday that while it disagreed with that part of last week’s ruling by a San Francisco-based appeals court, for now it was contesting only the portion of the order related to refugees.
Trump’s March 6 executive order said the temporary travel ban and refugee ban would give officials time to assess U.S. vetting procedures and would address the risk that terrorists could slip into the country. Lower courts had blocked the ban, saying Trump overstepped his authority and unconstitutionally targeted Muslims.
