Judicial consideration of the president’s motives, lawyers for the administration said, would violate the separation of powers.
.. In its briefs and at the argument, the administration’s position evolved. As the case progressed, the administration supplemented its request for categorical vindication with a backup plea for at least a partial victory.
At most, a Justice Department brief said, “previously admitted aliens who are temporarily abroad now or who wish to travel and return to the United States in the future” should be allowed to enter the country notwithstanding the ban.
The ban should continue to apply, the brief said, to people who have never visited the United States.
The Better, Non-Hysterical Case Against Trump’s Immigration Executive Order
This assumes, of course, the goal of the executive order was not to create the impression both at home and abroad that President Trump was actually banning Muslims – “boob bait for Bubbas,” as Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to call it.
I wrote on Twitter yesterday that I would trade the seven-nation visa ban for an extended review of any visitor of any nationality who’s traveled to Syria in past six years. One person on Twitter responded, “The Muslim ban is about decreasing the number of Muslims allowed into the USA. Your proposal would not do this. So, no.” Trump’s executive order isn’t really a Muslim ban, but apparently some of his supporters are happy to pretend to that it is, or they’re hoping that it is a first step towards an actual literal Muslim ban.
Justice Department Urges Appeals Court to Reinstate Trump’s Travel Ban
In an earlier brief filed Saturday, the Trump administration argued that Judge Robart’s order would cause irreparable harm to national security.
In response, lawyers for the two states said that was not plausible, as it would mean that the nation had long been suffering “some unspecified, ongoing irreparable harm.”
.. “We view the order as one that ultimately undermines the national security of the United States, rather than making us safer,” the declaration said. “In our professional opinion, this order cannot be justified on national security or foreign policy grounds.”
The officials filing the declaration included John F. Kerry, a secretary of state under Mr. Obama; Madeleine K. Albright, who held the same position under President Bill Clinton; Susan E. Rice, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser; and Leon E. Panetta, who served as secretary of defense and head of the C.I.A.
.. “And apart from all of these concerns,” the officials said, “the order offends our nation’s laws and values.”
.. “Immigrants or their children founded more than 200 of the companies on the Fortune 500 list, including Apple, Kraft, Ford, General Electric, AT&T, Google, McDonald’s, Boeing, and Disney,” the brief said. “Collectively, these companies generate annual revenue of $4.2 trillion, and employ millions of Americans.”
Former CIA chief: Trump’s travel ban hurts American spies — and America
President Trump’s executive order on immigration was ill-conceived, poorly implemented and ill-explained. To be fair, it would have been hard to explain since it was not the product of intelligence and security professionals demanding change, but rather policy, political and ideological personalities close to the president fulfilling a campaign promise to deal with a threat they had overhyped.
.. Paradoxically, they pointed out how the executive order breached faith with those very sources, many of whom they had promised to always protect with the full might of our government and our people. Sources who had risked much, if not all, to keep Americans safe.
..But as a former station chief told me, in the places where intelligence officers operate, rumor, whisper and conspiratorial chatter rule people’s lives. It doesn’t take paranoia to connect the action of the executive order with the hateful, anti-Islamic language of the campaign. In the Middle East, with its honor-based cultures, it’s easier to recruit someone we have been shooting at than it is to recruit someone whose society has been insulted.