Hawaii's Second Chance to Challenge Trump's Immigration Order

A federal judge announced that the state of Hawaii is given the opportunity to challenge the new immigration order of the Donald Trump administration. According to a report on Friday (October 6), David Watson, the U.S. District Attorney, stated that Hawaii has until Tuesday to file a renewed lawsuit against this order. The Trump administration also has until next Saturday (October 14) to respond to this lawsuit. The latest immigration order from the U.S. government removes the travel ban on Sudanese citizens and instead imposes restrictions on citizens from Chad, North Korea, and several Venezuelan officials, set to take effect on October 18. This travel ban also includes citizens from Iran and several other countries. Doug Chin, the Hawaii Attorney General, stated that the state opposed the first two immigration orders from Trump because they were deemed 'illegal' and unconstitutional and discriminatory against Muslims. According to this judicial official, 'unfortunately,' the new immigration order bears a strong resemblance to the previous two orders. Opponents of the new U.S. immigration order argue that it 'not only mocks the country's immigration laws but also enacts nationality discrimination, transfers congressional authority to the president, lacks logical connection to the issues it aims to address, and appears to fulfill Trump’s electoral promise to ban Muslims from entering the United States.' However, the Trump administration claims that this order is necessary to prevent individuals suspected of terrorist activities from entering the U.S. during a time when responsible agencies are reviewing the visa and refugee applicant screening system from certain countries. The Trump administration also states that this order includes countries whose governments refuse to cooperate with the U.S. in identifying suspected citizens. The Hawaii Attorney General has opposed this decision since February when the government announced its intention to prevent citizens from seven Muslim countries from traveling to the U.S. The Hawaii Attorney General's office announced last March that the state had officially filed a lawsuit against Trump’s new immigration order, hoping to suspend this law. Doug Chin had also stated regarding Trump’s second immigration order that although this order had undergone changes in response to protests, it still resembled the first order in this regard. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) submitted the first official complaint regarding the third immigration order concerning citizens from eight countries to the court on Friday, October 7. The ACLU described the new immigration order in its letter to a district court judge as 'a violation of the U.S. Constitution and federal immigration law.' The ACLU's director believes that the new order, like the previous two orders, 'is still fundamentally a tool to ban Muslims' and 'certainly constitutes discrimination based on nationality.' Meanwhile, U.S. government officials and supporters of the recent immigration order argue that citizens from over 40 other Muslim countries and Muslims residing in other countries are not subject to the recent immigration order, thus it cannot be interpreted as anti-Muslim. The first official complaint against the new order has been filed in court, while legal experts believe that 'challenging it in judicial authorities will be more difficult.' According to these legal experts in an interview with Reuters, challenging the new presidential order in judicial authorities will be more difficult due to the results of a multi-month analysis of the visa and travel application review process across several federal agencies. In this context, the U.S. Supreme Court postponed the review session of Trump’s previous immigration order.