Most of the latest President Donald Trump’s travel ban has been blocked by a federal judge in Hawaii hours before it was set to take effect. The judge said that the order suffers from precisely the same maladies as its predecessor, Associated Press reports.
This is the third time that some Trump’s travel restriction is thwarted by the courts. The travel ban for mostly Muslim countries was challenged by the state of Hawaii. The ruling was issued by District Judge Derrick Watson. The White House didn’t like his decision. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House spokeswoman, said that the ruling is dangerously flawed and it undercuts Trump’s efforts to keep Americans safe. The Justice Department announced an appeal.
The ban, which was set to go into effect early Wednesday, was for the people of Iran, Libya, Chad, North Korea, Somalia, Yemen, and Syria, as well as for some officials from the Venezuelan government and their families.
According to Watson, the new restrictions ignore a federal appeals court ruling against president Trump’s previous ban.
“The latest version plainly discriminates based on nationality in the manner that the Ninth Circuit has found antithetical to… the founding principles of this nation,” Watson wrote.
The judge’s ruling does not affect the restrictions against North Korea or Venezuela because the state of Hawaii hasn’t asked that.
“This is the third time Hawaii has gone to court to stop President Trump from issuing a travel ban that discriminates against people based on their nation of origin or religion. Today is another victory for the rule of law,” Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin said.
The ruling says that the ban doesn’t show that nationality makes a person a greater security risk to the U.S.
“The categorical restrictions on entire populations of men, women and children, based upon nationality, are a poor fit for the issues regarding the sharing of public safety and terrorism-related information that the president identifies,” Watson wrote and added that the ban is inconsistent because, for example, Iraq didn’t meed the security benchmark, but is not included in the ban.
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