State of Washington, et al., v. Trump., et al

Filing 113

RESPONSE by Plaintiff State of Washington re 108 Notice-Other Notice of Filing of Executive Order (Attachments: # 1 Declaration of N. Purcell, # 2 Exhibit A, # 3 Exhibit B, # 4 Exhibit C, # 5 Exhibit D, # 6 Exhibit E, # 7 Exhibit F, # 8 Exhibit G, # 9 Exhibit H, # 10 Exhibit I, # 11 Exhibit J)(Melody, Colleen)

Purcell
Declaration
Exhibit G

Revised executive order bans travelers from six Muslim-majority countries from getting n...

National Security

Revised executive order
bans travelers from six
Muslim-majority
countries from getting
new visas
By Matt Zapotosky, David Nakamura and Abigail Hauslohner March 6

President Trump signed a new travel ban Monday that administration officials said they hope will end legal
challenges over the matter by imposing a 90-day ban on the issuance of new visas for citizens of six
majority-Muslim nations.
In addition, the nation’s refugee program will be suspended for 120 days, and the United States will not
accept more than 50,000 refugees in a year, down from the 110,000 cap set by the Obama administration.
The new guidelines mark a dramatic departure from Trump’s original ban, issued in January and
immediately met by massive protests and then ordered frozen by the courts. The new ban lays out a far
more specific national security basis for the order, blocks the issuance only of new visas, and names just six
of the seven countries included in the first executive order, omitting Iraq.

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Trump signed the new ban out of public view, according to White House officials. The order will take effect
March 16.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/new-executive-order-bans-travele... 3/9/2017

Revised executive order bans travelers from six Muslim-majority countries from getting n...

“This executive order responsibly provides a needed pause so we can carefully review how we scrutinize
people coming here from these countries of concern,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in announcing
that the order had been signed.
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The order also details specific sets of people who would be able to apply for case-by-case waivers to the
order, including those previously admitted to the United States for “a continuous period of work, study, or
other long-term activity”; those with “significant business or professional obligations”; and those seeking to
visit or live with family.
Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, sent out an email asking people to sign a petition in support of the new
order.
“As your President, I made a solemn promise to keep America safe,” the email signed by Trump said. “And I
will NEVER stop fighting until we implement the policies you — and millions of Americans like you — voted
for.”
Democrats and civil liberties groups said Monday that the new order was legally tainted in the same way as
the first one: It was a thinly disguised Muslim ban. Trump, in his email, used the phrase “radical Islamic
terrorism” to describe his concern with the countries whose citizens would be blocked from acquiring visas.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/new-executive-order-bans-travele... 3/9/2017

Revised executive order bans travelers from six Muslim-majority countries from getting n...

That seems to portend more litigation — though how soon remains unclear. The attorney general of
Washington state, Bob Ferguson, who successfully sued to have the first ban blocked, said he was still
reviewing what to do.
The new order, Ferguson said, represented a “significant victory” for Washington state because the
administration had “capitulated on numerous key provisions that we contested in court.” But he said state
lawyers would need two or three days to see what action they would take in the court case.
“We’re reviewing it carefully, and still have concerns with the new order,” Ferguson said.
The Justice Department argued in a court filing that even if the litigation were to move forward, it should do
so at a slower pace, and with the new ban in place. The government noted that visa applicants typically have
to wait months and asserted there was “no imminent harm” from the president’s temporary suspension of
the issuance of new visas to certain people.
That assertion, though, did little to assuage the concerns of Democrats and civil liberties groups, who said
the new ban was just like the old.
Karen Tumlin, the legal director of the National Immigration Law Center, predicted that federal judges who
ordered a restraining order on the earlier ban are likely to do so again, and that pending lawsuits filed by
her organization and others will not need to be filed anew. “From our vantage point, that litigation lives on,”
she said.
New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman (D), who joined the legal fight against the first ban, said,
“While the White House may have made changes to the ban, the intent to discriminate against Muslims
remains clear.”
Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said, “The only
way to actually fix the Muslim ban is not to have a Muslim ban. Instead, President Trump has recommitted
himself to religious discrimination, and he can expect continued disapproval from both the courts and the
people.”
The revised travel ban also came under quick fire from refugee advocates, who said it unfairly penalizes
refugees without improving U.S. security.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/new-executive-order-bans-travele... 3/9/2017

Revised executive order bans travelers from six Muslim-majority countries from getting n...

“President Trump still seems to believe you can determine who’s a terrorist by knowing which country a
man, woman or child is from,” said Grace Meng, an immigration researcher with Human Rights Watch.
“Putting this executive order into effect will only create a false sense of security that genuine steps are being
taken to protect Americans from attack, while undermining the standing of the U.S. as a refuge for those at
greatest risk.”
Officials from the State, Homeland Security and Justice departments defended the new order as a necessary
measure to improve public safety. They said the countries named — Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Syria and
Yemen — were either state sponsors of terrorism, or their territories were so compromised that they were
effectively havens for terrorist groups. Iraq was omitted, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, because it is
an “important ally in the fight to defeat ISIS” — the Islamic State militant organization — and Iraq’s leaders
had agreed to implement new, unspecified security measures.
The ban is among several measures the administration has introduced in the name of border security. Also
Monday, Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly said he was “considering” separating undocumented
immigrant parents from their children to deter people from trying to enter the country. Those people, he
said, are often moved to the United States by a “terribly dangerous network” that originates in Central
America.
Civil rights advocates said Monday that the new ban’s sudden exclusion of Iraq, as well as the omission of
other countries with active terrorist groups — such as Colombia, Venezuela, Pakistan and the Philippines —
underscored the ban’s arbitrariness as a national security measure.
The new order provides other exceptions not contained explicitly in previous versions: for travelers from
those countries who are legal permanent residents of the United States, dual nationals who use a passport
from another country, and those who have been granted asylum or refugee status. It removes an exception
to the refugee ban for members of religious minority groups — which critics had pointed to as evidence the
first ban was meant to discriminate against Muslims — and it no longer imposes an indefinite prohibition
on travelers from Syria.

Anyone who holds a visa now should be able to get into the country without any problems, although those
whose visas expire will have to reapply, officials said.
The order claims that since 2001, hundreds of people born abroad have been convicted of terrorism-related
crimes in the United States. It cites two specific examples: Two Iraqi nationals who came to the United
States as refugees in 2009, it says, were convicted of terrorism-related offenses, and in October 2014, a

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/new-executive-order-bans-travele... 3/9/2017

Revised executive order bans travelers from six Muslim-majority countries from getting n...

Somali native brought to the country as a child refugee was sentenced to 30 years in prison for plotting to
detonate a bomb at a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Oregon. That man became a naturalized U.S.
citizen.
“We cannot risk the prospect of malevolent actors using our immigration system to take American lives,”
Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly said.
The new ban also says that more than 300 people who entered the country as refugees were the subject of
active counterterrorism investigations. U.S. officials declined to specify the countries of origin of those
being investigated, their immigration status, or whether they had been charged with crimes.
Charles Kurzman, a sociology professor who studies violent extremism at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill, said that since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, there have been no fatalities caused by
Muslim extremists with family backgrounds in the six countries covered by the new ban. A Department of
Homeland Security report assessing the terrorist threat posed by people from the seven countries covered
by the president’s original travel ban had cast doubt on the necessity of the executive order, concluding that
citizenship was an “unreliable” threat indicator and that people from the affected countries had rarely been
implicated in U.S.-based terrorism.
The Department of Homeland Security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, criticized the report
as being incomplete and not vetted with other agencies, and he said the administration should not be
pressed by the judiciary to unveil sensitive national security details to justify the ban.

The order represents an attempt by the Trump administration to tighten security requirements for travelers
from nations that officials said represent a terrorism threat. A more sweeping attempt in January provoked
mass protests across the country as travelers en route to the United States were detained at airports after
the surprise order was announced. The State Department had provisionally revoked tens of thousands of
visas all at once.
Officials sought to dismiss the idea that there would be any confusion surrounding the implementation of
the new order. They said they delayed implementation so the government could go through the appropriate
legal processes and ensure that no government employee would face “legal jeopardy” for enforcing the
order.
The revisions to the order will make it more defensible in court — limiting the number of people with
standing to sue — but the changes might not allay all the concerns raised by judges across the country. The

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Revised executive order bans travelers from six Muslim-majority countries from getting n...

three-judge panel with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, for example, said that exempting greencard and current visa holders from the ban would not address the court’s concern about U.S. citizens with
an interest in noncitizens’ travel.
The administration, too, will have to wrestle with comments by the president and top adviser Rudolph W.
Giuliani that seemed to indicate the intent of the order was to ban Muslims from entering the United States,
which could run afoul of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
On the campaign trail, Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United
States.” After the election, Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, said: “So when [Trump] first announced
it, he said, ‘Muslim ban.’ He called me up. He said, ‘Put a commission together. Show me the right way to do
it legally.’ ”
A federal judge in Virginia referenced those comments in ordering the ban frozen with respect to Virginia
residents and institutions, calling it “unrebutted evidence” that Trump’s directive might violate the First
Amendment.
Carol Morello, Matea Gold, Missy Ryan, Mark Berman and Rachel Weiner contributed to this report.

Matt Zapotosky covers the Justice Department for the Washington Post's National Security team.
Follow @mattzap
David Nakamura covers the White House. He has previously covered sports, education and city
government and reported from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Japan. Follow @davidnakamura
Abigail Hauslohner is a national reporter who covers Islam, Arab affairs and America. Before coming
to Washington in 2015, she spent seven years covering war, politics and religion in the Middle East,
and served as the Post’s Cairo bureau chief. She has also covered District politics and government.
Follow @ahauslohner

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/new-executive-order-bans-travele... 3/9/2017