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Texas Is First State To Back Trump’s Travel Ban, Attorney General Files Brief

By Ashley Hoffman
Published on: 23:56 PST, Feb 15, 2017

Texas has officially become the first state to support president Trump’s travel ban and the mounting litigation regarding Trump’s temporary ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries. The looming deadline prompted Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, to join the legal battle and file a friend-of-the-court brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the ninth Circuits on Wednesday. According to Trump’s closely monitored executive order issued on January 27, citizens of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen were barred from entering the U.S. for 90 days and refugees for 120 days.

Texas Attorney General Kenneth Paxton speaks out in support of Donald Trump’s travel ban. [Image by Alex Wong/Getty Images]

Paxton asserted to a federal appeals court that President Donald Trump acted well within his presidential authority in issuing his executive order on immigration, according to Reuters.

“Congress has delegated to the Executive Branch significant authority to prohibit aliens from entering the country, and the challenged Executive Order is a lawful exercise of that authority… Plaintiffs’ lawsuit presents no basis to enjoin the Executive’s exercise of the power delegated to it by Congress.”

Paxton attached a brief and asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California for permission to argue in support of Trump’s temporary ban on travelers entering the U.S. A group of 15 states and the District of Columbia have filed paperwork with the appeals court in support of Washington state’s challenge to Trump’s order, according to Reuters.

Paxton said the full court should reconsider whether a lower court was justified in placing a hold on the ban in the first place. Paxton asserted that the order contained a national security goal of ensuring that any foreigners seeking entry into the United States were to be properly vetted. Paxton said the process simply “reflects national-security interests implicated by the ongoing War on Terror against radical Islamic terrorists.”

President Donald Trump holds up one of the executive actions that he signed in the Oval Office. [Image by Pete Marovich/Getty Images]

The so-called “Muslim ban” sparked outrage across the country. Following the ceremony to enforce the executive order, U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle promptly suspended key parts of Trump’s executive order nationwide, according to CNN.

Paxton adamantly rejected the claims that Trump’s executive order discriminates against Muslims and places an importance on Christian minorities. If this were true, it would technically jeopardize the government’s ability to assist persecuted religious minorities abroad by granting them refugee status, according to Reuters.

A three-judge panel refused to block a lower court decision that suspended the ban. The panel rejected the Trump administration’s claim of presidential authority and also concluded that the executive order was unlikely to survive future legal challenges mounted by the states of Washington and Minnesota.

At the moment, Trump’s travel ban remains frozen and the president has said he is considering rewriting the executive order.

“Like every other State in the Union, amicus has a significant interest in protecting its residents’ safety… But the State itself possesses no authority to set the terms and conditions of entry for aliens seeking to enter the United States, or to restrict the entry of such aliens for foreign-affairs, public-safety, or national-security reasons. Instead, the State relies on the federal Executive Branch to carry out that function, pursuant to the laws of Congress.”

According to the Washington Post, attorney generals for California, New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and the District of Columbia urged the court to keep the ban frozen. The state of Hawaii has sued on its own and has also asked to intervene.

President Donald Trump On Recent ICE Raids

Last weekend, President Trump passionately asserted that there is a “court breakdown,” which is allowing a surge in people from the seven countries coming into the U.S. Trump also expressed his views on the U.S. district court’s order blocking his executive action and an appeals court’s upholding the Judge’s ruling. Trump said his directive was necessary to protect the United States from attacks by Islamist militants.

President Trump said the raids carried out by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency last week are a part of his highly acknowledged campaign promise to crack down on undocumented persons in the U.S.

After dozens of travelers are detained at airports around the country, the American Civil Liberties Union (also known as ACLU) filed a lawsuit on the behalf of two Iraqi men detained and threatened with deportation at Kennedy International airport. This occurred within hours of the executive order being signed.

The ACLU has advised that if ICE agents show up at the door of an undocumented immigrant, do not open the door unless the agents can show a warrant that has been signed by a judge.

The state of Texas actually led the legal fight against President Barack Obama’s plan to protect up to four million immigrants from deportation. Texas was joined by 25 other Republican-led states.

[Featured Image by Pete Marovich/Getty Images]

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