A second federal district court (in Maryland) has issued a nationwide injunction against the implementation of the latest (third) executive action by President Donald Trump on September 24, 2017 (and scheduled to go into effect today, October 18), banning travel from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. This memorandum opinion concludes that the latest executive action continues to be motivated by an unconstitutional discrimination against Muslims. The district court continued to reference statements and tweets by President Trump after the issuance of his second, revised executive order as evidence that his original campaign pledge and intent to implement a “Muslim ban” based on religious anti-Muslim animus, remained the rationale for this latest executive action, not the pretext of the proffered evidence of a review of the national security issues in each country.
The injunction does not include the ban on travel and immigration from North Korea and Venezuela, two countries added to the list of banned countries in the third executive action since the the number of nonimmigrant and immigrant visas granted to citizens of North Korea are negligible (less than 100 individuals) and the third executive action only applies to government officials and their families from Venezuela, an exclusion that is permissible in the usual expansion and contraction of diplomatic visas as part of U.S. foreign policy.
It is expected that this latest decision will be appealed by the Trump administration to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, and if not overturned by that appellate court, back to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Ignatius Bau 