Executive order restricting refugees, immigrants, and travel

What's happening in your world? Discuss it here.
Forum rules
Play nice. We will be watching

Re: Executive order restricting refugees, immigrants, and tr

Postby Tesseracts » Mon Feb 13, 2017 8:10 am

Tuli wrote:Even US-born citizens are not safe: http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/12/14583124/nasa-sidd-bikkannavar-detained-cbp-phone-search-trump-travel-ban

Not only is he a natural-born US citizen, but he’s also enrolled in Global Entry — a program through CBP that allows individuals who have undergone background checks to have expedited entry into the country. He hasn’t visited the countries listed in the immigration ban and he has worked at JPL — a major center at a US federal agency — for 10 years.


Nevertheless he was detained until he gave up his phone for the border control to rifle through, thereby violating NASA information security requirements. As for the cause of the search, none was given. Presumably because "looking brown" is still not a reason the CBP can say out loud.

I was really upset by this story. If a white American born man who works for NASA is treated this poorly, there is no hope for the rest of us. They didn't actually think he was a threat, as they didn't search his bag. It seems their motive was just to intimidate him, probably because he has a foreign name.
  • 13

User avatar
Tesseracts
Big Brother
Big Brother
 
Posts: 9653
Joined: Sat Apr 13, 2013 5:31 am
Show rep
Title: Social Media Expert

Re: Executive order restricting refugees, immigrants, and tr

Postby cmsellers » Mon Feb 13, 2017 4:39 pm

When I came back from Turkey, before I knew ISIS was a thing, I'd been living in a city that foreigners often went to to join the anti-regime fighters in Syria. I was pulled aside for further questioning, which at the time I thought was because the Asian-American immigration officer was racist (he had a heavy accent and commented that my hair in the picture in my passport looked red, which was an artefact of the lighting; I've never had red hair). Then after half an hour, a native-English-speaking black woman interviewed me and took maybe a minute to decide I wasn't a threat.

I wonder whether I would have found things as easy if I'd come back now. I'm white as Hitler's wet dreams and don't have a foreign-sounding name (I mean, my last name comes from French, but that's not really foreign-sounding, y'know), but I do have a beard, just like this guy. I could well have been a John Walker Lindh convert type, rather than a lazy fuck who just really hates shaving.
  • 8

User avatar
cmsellers
Back-End Admin
Back-End Admin
 
Posts: 9316
Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 7:20 pm
Location: Not *that* Bay Area
Show rep
Title: Broken Record Player

Re: Executive order restricting refugees, immigrants, and tr

Postby Learned Nand » Fri Mar 17, 2017 11:44 pm

A district court judge in Hawai'i temporarily struck down Trump's second executive order. Since Trump said he was going to revise his first order, there had been a lot of speculation as to what those changes would be. I and others had remarked that the revised order would have to drop the provision favoring immigrants of minority religions, and would have to exempt people already here as lawful permanent residents. At that point, the only real way to challenge the Executive Order would be to allege that, despite the changes, it was still motivated by an impermissible discriminatory purpose.

This is exactly what happened. Trump's second travel ban contained the aforementioned exemptions, and it also removed Iraq from the list of prohibited countries. Hawai'i then sued to enjoin enforcement of the order, alleging that despite its changes, it was still marred by the same discriminatory purpose that motivated the first order.

Judge Derrick Watson of the United States Court for the District of Hawai'i agreed with this argument, and issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting enforcement of the Executive Order nationwide. The judge explained:

slip op., at 28-29 wrote:Because a reasonable, objective observer—enlightened by the specific historical context, contemporaneous public statements, and specific sequence of events leading to its issuance—would conclude that the Executive Order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion, in spite of its stated, religiously-neutral purpose, the Court finds that Plaintiffs . . . are likely to succeed on the merits


This decision is somewhat remarkable for striking down the Executive Order as motivated by a discriminatory purpose after the administration had already made changes to the order that were designed to remedy the discrimination. This is a difficult position to take. You don't want a single finding of discriminatory purpose to bar policymakers from ever legislating in an area ever again. On the other hand, you don't want merely superficial changes to a law to immunize that law from Constitutional challenge. Striking the correct balance, I think, requires that the weight given to any evidence of discriminatory intent behind the first Executive Order be discounted by the amount that the changes to the order remedy that discrimination. The judge's opinion would have been stronger had he expressly held as much.

However, the decision did not rest entirely on statements Trump made during the campaign, or during the drafting period of the First Executive Order. The judge pointed to a number of statements that Trump and his administration and advisors made while they were drafting the second Executive Order. These statements included one by Stephen Miller, who said that the second ban was essentially the same as the first. Trump has been continuing to shoot himself in the foot with these kinds of statements as well. Just after the TRO was issued, Trump said that he'd prefer to just go back to the first ban, i.e., the ban that the 9th Circuit found was likely motivated by a discriminatory purpose.

It's worth, at this point, stressing how unusual this case is. It's extremely rare that policymakers would provide the courts with such blunt evidence of discriminatory purpose. In almost any other situation, it would have been difficult to find a discriminatory purpose in the first Executive Order, and almost impossible in the case of the second. It is only because Trump and his advisors provided statements expressly demonstrating that their intention was to ban Muslims, and that these statements were made before and during the drafting periods of both bans, that this judge was able to find evidence of discriminatory intent.

The Trump administration has said that they will quickly appeal this ruling, as well as another unfavorable ruling from a district court in Maryland. It is possible that this appeal could succeed. The circuit courts may well find that Trump's previous statements about a Muslim ban should not be considered given the changes to the order, and that additional evidence of discriminatory purpose is insufficient to support such a finding. But if so, Trump's luck (and tendency to place his foot so far into his mouth that he shits shoelaces) would need to change.
  • 15

Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Click for a Limerick
OrangeEyebrows wrote:There once was a guy, Aviel,
whose arguments no one could quell.
He tested with Turing,
his circuits fried during,
and now we'll have peace for a spell.
User avatar
Learned Nand
Back-End Admin
Back-End Admin
 
Posts: 9858
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 9:18 pm
Location: Permanently in the wrong
Show rep
Title: Auditor of Reality

Re: Executive order restricting refugees, immigrants, and tr

Postby Absentia » Sat Mar 18, 2017 2:48 am

Are we sure that Trump cares about actually enacting a Muslim ban, as opposed to merely being seen trying to do so? If he gets blocked by the courts, he has somebody to attack on Twitter that night and nobody can accuse him of going soft on immigration. What the hell does he care about actual policy?
  • 9

User avatar
Absentia
TCS Moderator
TCS Moderator
 
Posts: 1786
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2015 4:46 am
Location: Earth
Show rep

Re: Executive order restricting refugees, immigrants, and tr

Postby Learned Nand » Sat Mar 18, 2017 7:19 am

Absentia wrote:Are we sure that Trump cares about actually enacting a Muslim ban, as opposed to merely being seen trying to do so? If he gets blocked by the courts, he has somebody to attack on Twitter that night and nobody can accuse him of going soft on immigration. What the hell does he care about actual policy?

For a number of reasons (the preservation of my own sanity included), I couldn't speculate as to what Trump's actual motivations are. Maybe he just cares about the appearance of being hard on immigration. Maybe he cares about "winning" as much as he says, and wants to be validated by the courts, but is so ignorant that he does not know how to do that. Either way, he could hardly be making the situation more difficult for him. And if the Executive Order is struck down, then I'm happy, whether or not Trump is.
  • 10

Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Click for a Limerick
OrangeEyebrows wrote:There once was a guy, Aviel,
whose arguments no one could quell.
He tested with Turing,
his circuits fried during,
and now we'll have peace for a spell.
User avatar
Learned Nand
Back-End Admin
Back-End Admin
 
Posts: 9858
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 9:18 pm
Location: Permanently in the wrong
Show rep
Title: Auditor of Reality

Re: Executive order restricting refugees, immigrants, and tr

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Sat Mar 18, 2017 12:21 pm

Absentia wrote:Are we sure that Trump cares about actually enacting a Muslim ban, as opposed to merely being seen trying to do so? If he gets blocked by the courts, he has somebody to attack on Twitter that night and nobody can accuse him of going soft on immigration. What the hell does he care about actual policy?


--Moved to a sexier and more logical thread--

Yours lustily and sincerely,
Doosonious D. Dooderous
  • 4

Doodle Dee. Snickers
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 2730
Joined: Mon May 06, 2013 8:15 pm
Show rep

Re: Executive order restricting refugees, immigrants, and tr

Postby blehblah » Tue Mar 21, 2017 1:12 pm

Somehow, I feel that this belongs here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/tr ... 0a40fb8bea

Passengers traveling to the United States from 10 airports in eight Muslim-majority countries will be prohibited from bringing laptops, tablets and other portable electronic devices on board with them when they fly, according to new rules set to take effect Tuesday.

Fliers can still travel with these items, but they must be packed in their checked baggage. The ban will remain in place indefinitely, federal officials said.


Points for creativity?
  • 7

A quantum state of signature may or may not be here... you just ruined it.
User avatar
blehblah
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 3895
Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 9:16 pm
Show rep
Title: Error General, Panic Colonel

Re: Executive order restricting refugees, immigrants, and tr

Postby IamNotCreepy » Tue Mar 21, 2017 1:26 pm

That's got to be a real hassle. For people traveling on business, they can't do work. People won't be able to use their devices to watch movies and stuff. Also, now they won't be able to give their toddler a tablet to watch stuff on to keep them quiet.

And what about airlines that sell Wi-Fi? They surely won't be happy about this.
  • 6

User avatar
IamNotCreepy
TCS Admin
TCS Admin
 
Posts: 1521
Joined: Fri Dec 18, 2015 5:00 am
Location: Inside the "Cone of Uncertainty"
Show rep
Title: Chasing after the Wind

Re: Executive order restricting refugees, immigrants, and tr

Postby cmsellers » Tue Mar 21, 2017 5:08 pm

I was deported out of Istanbul Ataturk on Turkish Airlines. Though I had a tablet at the time, Turkish Airlines had screens in the back of the seats in front of you and free earbuds, so I watched a couple of shitty new-release movies while I was charging my tablet's battery.

If I'd had to buy the tickets myself I would have flown through German or Russia first since that's considerably cheaper than a direct flight, which I think means being exempt from the ban anyways?

Still, this is not going to help our increasingly strained relationship with Turkey. A smart president would leave provoking Erdoğan to things that actually matter, like supporting the Kurds in Syria, or calling him out if he engages in obvious election fraud. But if there's one thing nobody (who's not Trump) has ever claimed about Trump it's that he's smart.
  • 7

User avatar
cmsellers
Back-End Admin
Back-End Admin
 
Posts: 9316
Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 7:20 pm
Location: Not *that* Bay Area
Show rep
Title: Broken Record Player

Re: Executive order restricting refugees, immigrants, and tr

Postby Marcuse » Tue Mar 21, 2017 9:58 pm

It's notable that Britain has also adopted similar rules on electronics on flights to Britain from Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39343971

Edit: The UK government has claimed this particular ban is in response to a specific threat of terror directed at airlines. Opponents have claimed that making people keep tech in their luggage is actually making it harder to screen for devices.
  • 8

User avatar
Marcuse
TCS Sithlord
TCS Sithlord
 
Posts: 6592
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 8:00 pm
Show rep

Re: Executive order restricting refugees, immigrants, and tr

Postby Learned Nand » Sat Apr 29, 2017 11:12 pm

Trump has had yet another one of his executive orders struck down in court. On Tuesday, a Federal judge in San Francisco issued a temporary stay on the enforcement of Executive Order 13768, which was intended to deny federal funds to sanctuary cities.

The Trump administration's argument in this case was almost a self-parody. Recall how, in the cases regarding the travel ban, the government argued that Trump's statements outside the four corners of the Executive Order should not be considered. This case takes that logic a step further; here, the government does not want the court to consider Trump's statements within the four corners of the order, i.e., the text of the order itself. According to the administration, this Executive Order doesn't actually mean anything. It's just a rhetorical device, designed to emphasize activities that the administration would already be taking.

The text of the Executive Order, however, belies this interpretation. § 9(a) contains the relevant part:

In furtherance of this policy, the Attorney General and the Secretary, in their discretion and to the extent consistent with law, shall ensure that jurisdictions that willfully refuse to comply with 8 U.S.C. 1373 (sanctuary jurisdictions) are not eligible to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes by the Attorney General or the Secretary. The Secretary has the authority to designate, in his discretion and to the extent consistent with law, a jurisdiction as a sanctuary jurisdiction.


This isn't nothing. Quite the opposite: it gives the Attorney General or the Secretary of Homeland Security broad discretion to deny almost all Federal funding to a city. This is obviously not something the President can choose to do. Congress has the power to spend money, and therefore to choose the conditions under which the money is spent. U.S. Const. Art. I § 8. Congress can, and sometimes does, leave a certain amount of discretion to the President. But this Executive Order would allow the Attorney General or the Secretary to withhold nearly all Federal funds from jurisdictions they designate, regardless of whether Congress has granted them that discretion.

Not only does this violate basic separation of powers principles, but Judge Orrick found that, even if Trump did have the power to witthold funds without permission from Congress, the way in which he does so here would violate the Tenth Amendment. The Tenth Amendment, in its entirety, states that "[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." U.S. Const. Amend. X.. The Supreme Court has interpreted this amendment to prevent the Federal government from coercing states or state officials through the withholding of Federal funds.

In particular, the Supreme Court has held that the Federal government cannot force state officials to execute Federal laws, Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997); that when the Federal government withholds funds, the conditions for withholding funds must be clear, unambiguous, and serve matters of national concern, South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987); and that the withholding of funds cannot amount to coercion, National Federation of Independent Businesses v. Sebelius, 132 S. Ct. 2566 (2012).

The Judge found that the Executive Order was in violation of all of these principles. By leaving the Secretary and Attorney-General the discretion to determine what a sanctuary city was, the conditions for withholding Federal funds were neither clear nor unambiguous. Because such a determination would deny a city all Federal funding, the denial of funding amounted to coercion. And because this coercion is designed to enforce compliance with 8 U.S.C. § 1373, which requires state officials to communicate with the Federal government on matters of immigration, the Executive Order unconstitutionally forces state officials to enforce Federal law.

The Trump administration's response to all of this, by the way, is not to insist that denying sanctuary cities all Federal funds would be consistent with the Constitution. Instead, the administration insists that the Executive Order doesn't require them to do that. Instead, they argue that the Executive Order only allows the Secretary or Attorney-General designate as sanctuary cities those cities not compliant with 8 U.S.C. § 1373, and then only deny those cities Federal funds that Congress has already made contingent on compliance with 8 U.S.C. § 1373. In other words, the Order doesn't do anything at all, it is just designed as a rhetorical device to criticize sanctuary cities.

Trump's supporters insistence that we take him seriously, but not literally, may sometimes hold sway in the court of public opinion; but it cannot hold sway in a court of law. Judge Orrick, examining both the text of the Executive Order and the statements of Trump and Sessions in interviews and speeches, concluded that the Executive Order didn't mean nothing. On the contrary, it asserted a sweeping authority to do what not even Congress is allowed to do.

It's likely that Trump will appeal, but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals hasn't been friendly to him so far. And his argument is so bizarre that, even if he wins, his Order is given an authoritative reading that renders it meaningless. Trump has, for the umpteenth time in his Presidency, found himself trapped between the scylla of insisting he be taken at his word, and the charybdis of insisting he not be taken at his word.
  • 11

Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Click for a Limerick
OrangeEyebrows wrote:There once was a guy, Aviel,
whose arguments no one could quell.
He tested with Turing,
his circuits fried during,
and now we'll have peace for a spell.
User avatar
Learned Nand
Back-End Admin
Back-End Admin
 
Posts: 9858
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 9:18 pm
Location: Permanently in the wrong
Show rep
Title: Auditor of Reality

Re: Executive order restricting refugees, immigrants, and tr

Postby Absentia » Sun Apr 30, 2017 3:18 am

If the order really doesn't mean anything, why would they even defend it? Their argument is invalidated by the fact that they're making an argument.
  • 10

User avatar
Absentia
TCS Moderator
TCS Moderator
 
Posts: 1786
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2015 4:46 am
Location: Earth
Show rep

Re: Executive order restricting refugees, immigrants, and tr

Postby Absentia » Mon Jun 12, 2017 8:49 pm

Yet another legal defeat for Trump's travel ban: the Ninth Circuit upheld a lower court injunction against the revised version of the ban, ruling that the order is still unacceptable under federal immigration law because it lacks “a sufficient justification to suspend the entry of more than 180 million people on the basis of nationality.”

And yes, one of Trump's own tweets was used as evidence against him: "Indeed, the President recently confirmed his assessment that it is the 'countries' that are inherently dangerous, rather than the 180 million individual nationals of those countries who are barred from entry under the President's 'travel ban.'"

This is the lawsuit originating out of Hawaii, which will presumably be appealed to the Supreme Court along with the other travel ban lawsuit from the Fourth Circuit.
  • 10

User avatar
Absentia
TCS Moderator
TCS Moderator
 
Posts: 1786
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2015 4:46 am
Location: Earth
Show rep

Re: Executive order restricting refugees, immigrants, and tr

Postby Aquila89 » Mon Jun 26, 2017 4:29 pm

The Supreme Court allowed parts of the ban to go into effect.

The court is allowing the ban to go into effect for foreign nationals who lack any "bona fide relationship with any person or entity in the United States." The court, in an unsigned opinion, left the travel ban against citizens of six majority-Muslim on hold as applied to non-citizens with relationships with persons or entities in the United States, which includes most of the plaintiffs in both cases.
Examples of formal relationships include students accepted to US universities and an employee who has accepted a job with a company in the US, the court said.
  • 5

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
--Carl Jung
User avatar
Aquila89
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 3442
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 1:45 pm
Location: Hungary
Show rep

Re: Executive order restricting refugees, immigrants, and tr

Postby Windy » Mon Jun 26, 2017 4:37 pm

oh no did the russians hack the supreme court too
  • 1

User avatar
Windy
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 3127
Joined: Fri May 29, 2015 11:41 am
Show rep

PreviousNext

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 26 guests