A JUDGE in Maryland has become the second federal judge to block the Trump administration’s latest travel ban hours before it was set to take full effect.
US District Judge Theodore Chuang granted a nationwide preliminary injunction after US District Judge Derrick Watson in Hawaii blocked the revised ban.
The ban sought to place travel restrictions on citizens of eight countries – Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and Venezuela – and had been due to come into effect yesterday.
Watson’s ruling said the new ban fails to show that nationality alone makes a person a greater security risk to the US.
Chuang’s ruling said the administration had “not shown that national security cannot be maintained without an unprecedented eight-country travel ban”.
“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.
He said the ban is inconsistent in the way some countries are included or left out. For example, Iraq failed to meet the security benchmark but was omitted from the ban. Somalia met the information-sharing benchmark but was included.
The Trump administration said the ban, announced in September, was based on an assessment of each country’s security situation and willingness to share information with the US.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the ruling “dangerously flawed” and said it “undercuts the president’s efforts to keep the American people safe”.
The Justice Department said it will quickly appeal.
The judge’s ruling applies only to the six Muslim-majority countries on the list. It does not affect the restrictions against North Korea or Venezuela, because Hawaii did not ask for that.
The state of Hawaii challenged the ban on a set of mostly Muslim countries, arguing that the restrictions would separate families and undermine the recruiting of diverse college students.
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