Federal judge denies Hawaii’s attempt to exempt grandparents from travel ban News
Federal judge denies Hawaii’s attempt to exempt grandparents from travel ban

A judge for the US District Court for the District of Hawaii [official website] on Thursday denied [opinion, PDF] the state’s attempt to exempt grandparents from President Donald Trump‘s [official profile] travel ban. The state asked Judge Derrick Watson to interpret the scope of a ruling [JURIST report] from the Supreme Court [official website] last month and was further defined [JURIST report] by the administration a week later. The Supreme Court’s order permits execution of the travel ban, but it “may not be enforced against an individual seeking admission as a refugee who can credibly claim a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.” Watson wrote in his opinion that the district court would not “usurp the prerogative of the Supreme Court.” He stated:

Upon careful consideration of the parties’ submissions, it is evident that the parties quarrel over the meaning and intent of words and phrases authored not by this Court, but by the Supreme Court in its June 26, 2017 per curiam decision. That is, the parties’ disagreements derive neither from this Court’s temporary restraining order, this Court’s preliminary injunction, nor this Court’s amended preliminary injunction, but from the modifications to this Court’s injunction ordered by the Supreme Court.

According to a court filing [order, PDF], Hawaii plans to appeal the district court’s ruling.

Cases concerning issues of immigration from predominantly Muslim countries continue to be processed in the federal judiciary. In June the US District Court for the Western District of Washington [official website] denied in part [JURIST report] and granted in part a motion to dismiss a class action suit filed against President Donald Trump and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) [official website]. Also in June the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan [official website] temporarily blocked [JURIST report] the deportation of more than 100 Iraq nationals, arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) [official website] agents, for approximately two weeks, during which time the court will decide whether it has jurisdiction in the matter. Earlier that same month the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] ruled against [JURIST report; case materials] the majority of Trump’s revised executive order limiting travel from six Muslim-majority countries. That ruling affirmed [JURIST report] the majority of a district court injunction in March that blocked the order from being enforced. In May a federal district court in Washington granted a temporary restraining order [JURIST report] to allow legal aid groups to continue to provide certain kinds of assistance to undocumented immigrants. Five days prior a Michigan federal district court ordered [JURIST report] the Trump administration to disclose the draft of the so-called “Muslim ban” executive order.