A federal judge has invalidated Donald Trump’s ban on 39 countries.
A US federal judge ruled on Friday that the Donald Trump administration’s ban on immigration to 39 countries following the D.C. shooting last November is illegal. Chief U.S. District Judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, ruled that USCIS adopted a series of illegal policies targeting people from 39 African, Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern countries.The Obama-appointed judge said that those policies had thrown the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into an indefinite legal limbo. “USCIS’s control over adjudications cannot be attributed to any wrongdoing by these individuals; it arises only from the accident of their birth,” he wrote. “But the rule of law must apply to everyone equally, and as is clear here, USCIS did not follow the law and did not do things the right way,” McConnell wrote in a 135-page ruling.
“In fact, the agency violated the very immigration laws it was charged by Congress to administer, as well as the administrative laws governing the agency’s actions.”The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to the ruling. The administration can appeal the ruling and can request an immediate stay of implementation of the ruling if it does not want to lift the ban.The policies barring immigrants from a list of countries from receiving any immigration benefits, visas, green cards or travel visas were announced after an Afghan national, Rahmanullah Lakhanwal, shot two National Guard members in Washington.
Lakkanwal did not admit guilt.“The Court is reminded of a line often repeated in debates over immigration policy: If people want to immigrate to the United States, they must ‘follow the law’ and ‘do things the right way,’” the judge wrote. “This case serves as a perfect example of immigrants doing just that.”
List of 39 countries
Full comment: Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Yemen.Partial suspension: Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Dominica, Gabon, Gambia, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
