Judicial Overreach, National Security, and President Trump's Executive Order Putting a Hold on US Entry from Terrorist-ridden Countries

By now, many of us are feeling punch drunk from the constant pounding we're taking from the Progressive mainstream media over President Trump's immigration order. • • • THE 9TH CIRCUIT ACTION. The latest installment in the 9th Circuit's decision to "kick around" President Trump came early on Sunday morning when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Justice Department's request for an immediate reinstatement of President Donald Trump's temporary hold on accepting certain travelers and refugees. At the District Court level in the 9th Circuit, Washington state and Minnesota had filed a lawsuit arguing that the temporary hold and the global 120-day suspension of the US refugee program harmed residents and effectively mandated discrimination. The DOJ filed an appeal of Judge James Robard’s US District Court order in Seattle that temporarily stopped Trump’s Emergency Order travel hold on Saturday night. The DOJ argued at the 9th Circuit that it is the “sovereign prerogative" of a President to admit or exclude aliens. The 9th Circuit's denial of an immediate stay means the legal battles will continue for days at least. It is likely that other federal circuits will decide in favor of the Trump administration's EO and that the final decision will be made by the Supreme Court. But, President Trump's choice to fill the empty Scalia seat on the Supreme Court will probably not be confirmed until later this spring, making a 4-4 decision upholding the stay a possibility, depending on how fast the lawsuits move through the federal court system. • • • DOJ ARGUMENTS ON APPEAL. The position argued by the DOJ is the "settled law" on alien admission into the United States. But, the 9th Circuit, known for its liberal and unpredictable decisions -- more of its decisions are overturned by the Supreme Court than those of any other federal circuit -- decided to ignore "settled law" and grant a stay of the Seattle District Court order, instead asking for the Justice Department and other parties to file responses by Monday afternoon. The DOJ appeal also stated that the district court’s ruling “conflicts with the basic principle that an alien seeking initial admission to the United States requests a privilege and has no constitutional rights regarding his application." That is also "settled law." The DOJ appeal also argued the temporary order blocking Trump’s EO was an overreach of judicial authority by US District Judge James Robart in Seattle : "Judicial second-guessing of the President's national security determination in itself imposes substantial harm on the federal government and the nation at large." Acting Solicitor General Noel Francisco argued in the Saturday night appeal filing that the President has the power to decide who can enter or stay in the United States : "The power to expel or exclude aliens is a fundamental sovereign attribute, delegated by Congress to the executive branch of government and largely immune from judicial control." The Justice Department asked that the federal judge's order be stayed pending resolution of the appeal, so that the continued effectiveness of the hold can "ensure that those approved for admission do not intend to harm Americans and that they have no ties to terrorism." • One notable point in the Robart decision was that he refused to recognize the national security aspects of the EO, and this leaves the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals an opening to restore the EO on a national security basis, if it so chooses. • • • CONFUSION REIGNS. Even before the Seattle US District Court and the 9th Circuit got involved in the arguments around the Trump Executive Order, there had been confusion for many travelers trying to reach the US, some of whom were refused boarding in other countries and some of whom were already on flights that landed on US territory and were detained by US Customs and Border Protection officials. The original issues centered on whether the EO applied to green card holders returning to the US and to aliens who had already been granted US visas before the EO was issued. On Saturday, demonstrations took place outside the White House, in New York and near the Trump estate in Palm Beach, Florida, where President Trump was attending the annual American Red Cross fundraising gala. Trump told reporters at Mar a Lago : "We'll win. For the safety of the country, we'll win." The State Department on Saturday advised refugee aid agencies that those set to travel before Trump signed his order will now be allowed in. A State Department official said in an email obtained by the Associated Press that the government was "focusing on booking refugee travel" through February 17 and working to have arrivals resume as soon as Monday. The Homeland Security Department no longer was directing airlines to prevent visa-holders affected by the EO from boarding US-bound planes. DHS said it had "suspended any and all actions" related to putting in place the EO. • • • THIS IS NOT ABOUT IMMIGRATION, IT IS ABOUT TRUMP. "It's our President's duty to honor this ruling and I'll make sure he does," Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a live statement following the Seattle District Court ruling -- that is one lawyer's display of contempt for the Constitution and for the grant of separate powers to the three branches of government, and it is also a window into the Progressive Democrat contempt for President Trump and for the constitutional transfer of power to him in the November election. • However, the 9th Circuit denial of an emergency request from the Justice Department to lift the stay on enforcing President Trump's EO denying visas to travelers from seven Moslem countries was not a rejection of the substance (the merits) of the Trump EO. It was only a denial of the government's contention that the stay issued by the District Court on Friday required an emergency ruling. The 9th Circuit requested briefs from both sides before making a final decision. • But, we can see the Prog-Dem difficulty in attacking the EO in the CNN report on the 9th Circuit's decision : "The strongly-worded filing by the Department of Justice argued that blocking the travel ban 'harms the public' and 'second-guesses the President's national security judgment. The government's emergency motion lodged a mutli-pronged attack on Robart's decision, emphasizing the President's broad authority in the immigration context. (Robart's ruling) contravenes the considered judgment of Congress that the President should have the unreviewable authority to suspend the admission of any class of aliens,' the Justice Department wrote in its filing. DOJ further argued that the parties who filed the lawsuit -- the attorneys general of Washington state and Minnesota -- lack the ability to sue in federal court because their alleged harms are too 'speculative.' Robart, a Bush appointee sitting in the Western District of Washington, ruled Friday that the states that filed the lawsuit, Washington and Minnesota, 'have met their burden of demonstrating that they face immediate and irreparable injury as a result of the signing and implementation of the executive order.' Robart went on to explain that Trump's executive order adversely affects 'residents in areas of employment, education, business, family relations, and freedom to travel.' " There is little in CNN's summary to suggest that the DOJ was wrong in the positions it took at the 9th Circuit appeal. • As for Judge Robart, he has a record of helping refugees for free -- and promised to continue "that experience" from the bench. Robart told the Senate during his 2004 confirmation process that he did pro bono work for refugees from Southeast Asia, a large source of immigration into the Pacific northwest. His work for refugees was raised by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Orrin Hatch. On the day Robart was confirmed, Hatch offered up his work for refugees as a key reason he should win a seat on the federal court. Hatch on June 17, 2004 said : "He brings a wealth of trial experience to the federal bench after trying in excess of 50 cases to verdict or judgment as sole or lead counsel, and he has been active in the representation of the disadvantaged through his work with Evergreen Legal Services and the independent representation of Southeast Asian refugees." So, the anti-Trump war is not limited to Prog-Dems, it extends to some on the GOP side of the aisle who came late to the awareness that migrants and refugees should be properly and thoroughly vetted. • It was about Trump from the very beginning. As Conservative News put it : "From the way New Yorkers behaved over the weekend at JFK Airport, you would think that President Donald Trump had rounded up 3 million American Moslems into a collection of brutal concentration camps. This was pretty much how the media portrayed it....the truth is that this order was largely based on legislation already signed by...President Barack Obama....the media is not mentioning that he signed a law in 2015 restricting immigration from the very same countries included in Trump’s Friday order. Over objections from the ACLU, President Obama signed the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act. The US Visa Waiver Program [had allowed] people from nearly 40 countries around the world to enter the United States without a visa as long as the visit is scheduled for less than 90 days. In the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attack, President Obama signed legislation that eliminated that special privilege for anyone who had visited Iran, Iraq, Syria, or Sudan for the past five years. Two months later, the Obama administration added three more countries to the list: Libya, Yemen, and Somalia. Add them all up and you have the exact same countries on Trump’s immigration ban." Prog-Dem Obama supporters point out that removing a special visa waiver is different from a temporary immigration hold, but migrating to or visiting the US is in itself a special privilege. It is not the constitutional right of every human being to come to the United States, despite what we hear from the Prog-Dem Left. Every American President, Republican or Democrat, has understood this. However, the media has brainwashed many Americans into believing that Trump is a racist monster whose every move is dangerously insane. No President in history has been treated like this. It reaches far beyond the usual Left bias -- it is the Final Battle of the Establishment that sees its power flowing back to American citizens and the Constitution. They will do whatever it takes, with no regard to legal niceties, to keep that from happening. • • • ONE FEDERAL JUDGE AGREES WITH TRUMP. A federal judge in Boston on Friday refused to extend a restraining order against President Trump’s EO blocking entry to the US by people from seven majority-Moslem nations. The block on implementing the EO in Massachusetts began last Sunday and is now slated to expire on February 5. US District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton issued a 21-page ruling stating that lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had not demonstrated the need for extending the restraining order, The Boston Globe reports. Judge Gorton added he was not deciding the case’s merits, but merely letting the temporary pause expire. Other federal judges in multiple states last week barred the removal of legal permanent residents and the Boston federal district court order also prohibited the removal of visa holders who had arrived in the US and were detained or flown out of America. • This is the weak point in the Trump EO, I believe, and it will be overturned no matter the decision on the constitutionality of the EO overall. People who are green card holders -- an overreach flaw since corrected by the Trump administration -- and even those with valid visas are protected to some degree by the Constitution. The EO hold on general refugee admissions into the US for 120 days, adding an indefinite pause on Syrian refugees due to Syria’s ongoing civil war, is intended to confirm whether the countries named in the EO can provide the information needed to properly vet those asking for admission to the US and are very likely to withstand attacks on their constitutionality. • Religious groups, state attorneys general, residents and visitors to the US have filed more than 50 lawsuits challenging Trump since he issued the EO a week ago. Lawsuits have been filed at US district courts in 14 states. The legal challenges range from questioning the detention of specific individuals to others focused on the order's impact on Moslems in general. Democratic state attorneys general in Virginia and Washington have also accused the order of negatively impacting their jurisdiction’s businesses and educational institutions. • • • DEAR READERS, the arguments of most of the lawsuits against the Trump EO are based on the notion that somehow the 14th Amendment protects the entire world. Its due process and equal treatment clauses were written to make sure that freed American slaves were given equality before the law. It was not even legally necessary because the 13th Amendment had made that clear. The 14th Amendment, like the rest of the Constitution, was written to protect and guide Americans and America. It does not apply to the rest of the world, except in rare cases of nation-to-nation disputes and commercial or criminal activities that involve America or its citizens or companies. No citizen of Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan or Somalia has any standing under the US Constitution unless one of the above situations is in play. This is true whether the issue is immigration, a visa, refugee entry, or religion. But, the federal courts, since the Warren Court began the practice, have applied the 14th Amendment to every issue for which they search for a Leftist Progressive Democrat solution, and it has made a shambles of the traditional common-sense meaning of due process and equal protection under the Constitution. • After the 9th Circuit refused to stay the Seattle District Court order, visa holders from the seven majority-Moslem countries who were turned away from the United States under President Trump's travel hold are rushing to try again, hoping to make it through a narrow window opened by legal challenges. The 9th Circuit denied Trump's effort to immediately reinstate the ban early Sunday. For now, it remains blocked by a judge's temporary restraining order, and federal officials have told their staffs to comply. Advocates weren't taking any chances, telling people who could travel to get on the earliest flights they could find after the week-old temporary travel hold was blocked on Friday. Rula Aoun, director of the Arab American Civil Rights League in Dearborn, Michigan, told Newsmax : "We're telling them to get on the quickest flight ASAP." Her group sued in federal court in Detroit, challenging Trump's executive order as unconstitutional. • The national security argument for the EO has been scoffed at by the Prog-Dems and their MSM, but consider this -- a 29-year-old Egyptian arrived in Paris from Dubai in the last week of January; on February 3, he took two machetes bought in Paris to the Louvre Museum and tried to attack visitors; only the presence of French military avoided a massacre (armed military are now routinely stationed on streets all over France to protect people from terrorist threats). This is what "threat to national security" means in President Trump's EO, and no judge has the right to challenge that determination without being privy to the same intelligence the President has. • But, now in the US, federal district judges with no access to any of the classified intelligence that likely went into Trump's decision to implement the EO are ordering stays to the implementation of the EO as if they had any idea what they are talking about. And, Seattle District Court Judge Robart as determined that he is supremely qualified to overrule the Commander-in-Chief of the US military on this national security matter. This judicial lawmaking, social policy-making and bullying of every conservative President is precisely the judicial overreach and judicial activism that Donald Trump was elected to eliminate, because "We, the People" have to live with the real-life consequences of their out-of-control and dangerously political decisions. Paris machetes are not out of the question in America and America is sick of worrying about the possibilities of terrorist attacks. Americans want their nation to be free of judicial tyranny and disregard for the safety of American citizens. Americans want the Constitution to prevail. Nationwide judicial stays directly challenging national security policies of the sitting President are purely and simply judicial overreach on a grand scale meant to destroy President Trump. Enough.