Tag Archives: Travel Ban

Supreme Court tosses one of two travel ban challenges

FILE PHOTO - An international traveler arrives after U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order travel ban at Logan Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. January 30, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out an appeals court ruling that struck down President Donald Trump’s previous temporary travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority nations countries that has now expired.

In a one-page order, the court acted in one of two cases pending before the nine justices over Trump’s travel ban, a case from Maryland brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued to stop the ban contained in a March executive order.

For now, the court did not act on a separate challenge brought by the state of Hawaii, which the court had also agreed to hear. That case also features a challenge to a separate 120-day refugee ban, which has not yet expired.

That case could yet be dismissed once the refugee ban expires on Oct. 24, meaning the court remains unlikely to issue a final ruling on whether the ban was lawful.

The justices were unanimous in deciding against ruling in the Maryland case, although one of the liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, noted that she would not have wiped out the appeals court ruling.

The justices had been scheduled to hear arguments in the case on Tuesday, but removed it from their calendar after Trump’s 90-day ban expired on Sept. 24 and was replaced with a reworked ban.

The expired ban had targeted people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan. The new open-ended ban, scheduled to take effect on Oct. 18, removed Sudan from the list while blocking people from Chad and North Korea and certain government officials from Venezuela from entering the United States.

The Trump administration has urged the court to dismiss both cases while the challengers have asked the justices to rule on the issue.

The Supreme Court in June agreed to take up the two cases and allowed the travel ban, which had been blocked by lower courts, to go into effect with certain changes.

Among the issues raised is whether the travel ban discriminated against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on the government favoring or disfavoring a particular religion.

The new ban, Trump’s third including one issued in January that was blocked by lower courts, could affect tens of thousands of potential immigrants and visitors to the United States. Opponents have already challenged it in court.

Trump had promised as a candidate “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Challengers urge U.S. Supreme Court to rule on Trump travel ban

International travelers arrive on the day that U.S. President Donald Trump's limited travel ban, approved by the U.S. Supreme Court, goes into effect, at Logan Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., June 29, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder - RC1393C705B0

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Challengers to President Donald Trump’s travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries on Thursday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to decide the policy’s legality even though it has been replaced with a revised plan, while his administration asked that the case be dismissed.

In separate letters to the court, the American Civil Liberties Union and the state of Hawaii said the justices should still hear the case, which had been scheduled for arguments next week but was taken off their calendar after the administration announced the reworked ban last month.

The Justice Department urged the justices not to hear the case, to throw out earlier lower court rulings that had invalidated the ban and to order that the legal challenges be dismissed.

Trump’s three successive moves to block entry into the United States by people from several predominantly Muslim countries have been among his most contentious acts since taking office in January. Trump had promised as a candidate “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

The ACLU told the court that the plaintiffs who sued to stop the policy “retain an all-too-real stake in the outcome of the case” even though the original 90-day travel ban on people from six countries expired on Sept. 24. That order was signed by Trump in March and was enacted with some changes in June with the high court’s blessing.

The justices on Sept. 25 asked all the parties to file court papers expressing views on whether the case was moot, meaning there is nothing left to decide, because the temporary ban expired.

That ban had targeted people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan. The new open-ended ban announced in a presidential proclamation on Sept. 24 removed Sudan from the list and blocked people from Chad and North Korea and certain government officials from Venezuela from entering the United States.

Among the issues raised by the challengers is whether the ban discriminated against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on the government favoring or disfavoring a particular religion.

REFUGEE BAN

A separate 120-day ban on refugees entering the United States that was part of Trump’s March order expires on Oct. 24.

Hawaii’s lawyers said that even if the high court decides not to issue a ruling, it should still leave the lower court decisions in place. To do otherwise would allow the administration to effectively win the case by erasing rulings that had gone against Trump, Hawaii argued.

The Justice Department said that it wants the lower court rulings tossed because the challengers will otherwise cite them in new litigation against Trump’s reworked ban.

“The lower courts should be considering challenges to the proclamation anew based on its text, operation, and findings,” Justice Department lawyers wrote.

The weekly behind-closed-doors meeting in which the justices consider next steps in cases before them is scheduled for Friday morning. The court could make an announcement at any time.

The new ban could affect tens of thousands of potential immigrants and visitors to the United States. Opponents have said that like the earlier two orders from January and March, it is still effectively a “Muslim ban.”

Even if the Supreme Court dismisses the older case, it may still have to weigh in on the issue in the future. Various challengers have filed suit against the reworked ban, and those cases potentially could reach the high court.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

More groups challenge Trump’s latest travel ban in court

FILE PHOTO - Protesters hold signs against U.S. President Donald Trump's limited travel ban, approved by the U.S. Supreme Court, in New York City, U.S. on June 29, 2017. REUTERS/Joe Penney/File Photo

By Mica Rosenberg

NEW York (Reuters) – Muslim immigrants and an advocacy group filed a fresh lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s latest version of a travel ban that placed indefinite restrictions on the entry of citizens from eight countries to the United States.

The suit filed late Monday in federal court in Maryland challenges a Sep. 24 Presidential proclamation limiting travel from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and North Korea. Certain government officials from Venezuela were also barred.

Six individual plaintiffs who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents with Iranian relatives who could be blocked from coming to the United States, along with the group Iranian Alliances Across Borders, claim the ban violates an immigration law that prevents discrimination based on nationality.

The complaint says that the majority of the people affected by the ban are Muslim and point to Trump’s campaign promises for “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” The suit says North Korea and Venezuela were added so Trump could “cloak this latest iteration of his Muslim ban in religiously neutral garb by invoking a national security review.”

The latest ban goes fully into effect on Oct. 18 and could affect tens of thousands of potential immigrants and visitors. Trump has argued that the restrictions are necessary to tighten security and prevent terrorist attacks.

Department of Justice spokesman Ian Prior said the agency “will continue to vigorously defend the President’s inherent authority to keep this country safe.”

Trump’s proclamation followed on two earlier temporary travel bans against some of the same countries, after the government did a global review of information sharing and security screening protocols.

The first ban issued soon after Trump took office in January targeted seven countries but was blocked by courts following a hasty implementation and chaotic scenes at airports.

The second ban signed in March targeted six countries and was also blocked by lower courts. It was then partially revived by the Supreme Court in June. The third ban, with no clear end date, came out when the temporary measures expired.

On Friday the American Civil Liberties Union said it was seeking to amend an existing lawsuit in Maryland federal court filed against the previous March 6 ban to include the latest proclamation.

Legal experts say the new restrictions are likely on more solid footing, in part because they followed a detailed review by federal agencies.

(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg; editing by Susan Thomas)

Supreme Court justice temporarily preserves Trump refugee ban

FILE PHOTO: Protesters gather outside the Trump Building at 40 Wall St. to take action against America’s refugee ban in New York City, U.S., March 28, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy on Monday provided a temporary reprieve for President Trump’s order blocking most refugees from entering the United States, putting on hold a lower court’s ruling loosening the prohibition.

Kennedy’s action gave the nine justices more time to consider the Justice Department’s challenge filed on Monday to the lower court’s decision allowing entry to refugees from around the world if they had a formal offer from a resettlement agency. The full Supreme Court could act within days.

The Justice Department opted not to appeal another part of last Thursday’s ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that related to Trump’s ban on travelers from six Muslim-majority nations. The 9th Circuit ruling broadened the number of people with exemptions to the ban to include grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins of legal U.S. residents.

Without Kennedy’s intervention, the appeals court decision would have gone into effect on Tuesday. Kennedy asked refugee ban challengers to file a response to the Trump administration’s filing by noon on Tuesday.

Under the 9th U.S. Circuit’s ruling, up to 24,000 additional refugees would become eligible to enter the United States than otherwise would be allowed, according to the administration.

Trump’s March 6 order banned travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days and locked out most aspiring refugees for 120 days in a move the Republican president argued was needed to prevent terrorist attacks.

The order, which replaced a broader January one that was blocked by federal courts, was one of the most contentious acts of his presidency. Critics called it an unlawful “Muslim ban” that made good on Trump’s promise as a candidate of “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

The broader question of whether the travel ban discriminates against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution, as lower courts previously ruled, will be argued before the Supreme Court on Oct. 10.

The Supreme Court in June partially revived the order after its provisions were blocked by lower courts. But the justices said a ban could be applied only to those without a “bona fide” relationship to people or entities in the United States.

New litigation was brought by Hawaii over the meaning of that phrase, including whether written assurances by resettlement agencies obligating them to provide services for specific refugees would count.

Hawaii and other Democratic-led states, the American Civil Liberties Union and refugee groups filed legal challenges after Trump signed his order in March.

“The Trump administration has ended its odd and ill-advised quest to ban grandmas from the country,” Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin said on Monday.

“With respect to the admission to the United States of refugees with formal assurances and the Supreme Court’s temporary stay order, each day matters,” Chin added, promising to respond soon to the administration’s filing.

In court papers filed earlier on Monday, the Justice Department said the 9th Circuit refugees decision “will disrupt the status quo and frustrate orderly implementation of the order’s refugee provisions.”

Omar Jadwat, an ACLU lawyer, contrasted Trump’s efforts to keep alive his travel ban with the Republican president’s decision last week to rescind a program that protected from deportation people brought to the United States illegally as children, dubbed “Dreamers.”

“The extraordinary efforts the administration is taking in pursuit of the Muslim ban stand in stark contrast to its unwillingness to take a single step to protect 800,000 Dreamers,” Jadwat said.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. appeals court rejects Trump’s bid to bar most refugees

FILE PHOTO - An Iceland Air flight crew arrives on the day that U.S. President Donald Trump's limited travel ban, approved by the U.S. Supreme Court, goes into effect, at Logan Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., June 29, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By Mica Rosenberg and Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Thursday rejected the Trump administration’s effort to temporarily bar most refugees from entering the country, ruling that those who have relationships with a resettlement agency should be exempt from an executive order banning refugees.

A three-judge 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel also ruled that grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins of legal U.S. residents should be exempted from President Donald Trump’s order, which banned travelers from six Muslim-majority countries.

The ruling is the latest legal blow to the President’s sweeping executive order barring travelers from Iran, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen for 90 days, which the Republican president said was necessary for national security.

The Justices said that the government did not persuasively explain why the travel ban should be enforced against close relatives of people from the six countries or refugees with guarantees from resettlement agencies. The 3-0 ruling takes effect in five days.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that Trump’s ban could be implemented on a limited basis, but should not be applied to people with “bona fide” relationships to people or entities in the United States.

The government took a narrow view of that interpretation, which the state of Hawaii challenged in court. A lower court judge sided with Hawaii, and the 9th Circuit judges upheld that view.

“It is hard to see how a grandparent, grandchild, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, sibling-in-law, or cousin can be considered to have no bona fide relationship with their relative in the United States,” the court said.

The court also rejected the administration’s argument that the written assurances provided by resettlement agencies obligating them to provide services for specific refugees is not a bona fide relationship.

The agencies’ advance preparation and expenditure of resources for each refugee “supports the district court’s determination that a bona fide relationship with the refugee exists,” the decision said.

Trump’s first version of the executive order, signed in January, sparked protests and chaos at airports around the country and the world before it was blocked by courts. The administration replaced that version of the ban with a new order in March in response to the legal challenges.

A Department of Justice spokeswoman said: “The Supreme Court has stepped in to correct these lower courts before, and we will now return to the Supreme Court to vindicate the Executive Branch’s duty to protect the Nation.”

Hawaii’s Attorney General Douglas Chin said the ruling “keeps families together. It gives vetted refugees a second chance. The Trump administration keeps taking actions with no legal basis. We will keep fighting back.”

Refugee organizations cheered Thursday’s decision, saying it will give relief to people fleeing violence who were caught in limbo after the ban.

The broader question of whether the revised travel ban discriminates against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution will be considered by the U.S. Supreme Court in October.

(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Andrew Chung and Lawrence Hurley in Washington; editing by Sue Horton and Grant McCool)

Trump administration defends travel ban in Supreme Court brief

FILE PHOTO - International passengers arrive at Washington Dulles International Airport after the U.S. Supreme Court granted parts of the Trump administration's emergency request to put its travel ban into effect later in the week pending further judicial review, in Dulles, Virginia, U.S., June 26, 2017. REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan

By Mica Rosenberg

NEW YORK (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration reiterated arguments defending its temporary travel ban in a filing with the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, repeatedly citing the executive’s broad powers to exclude foreigners from the United States.

The travel ban barring refugees and people from six Muslim-majority nations was signed as an executive order in March, after an earlier version had to be scrapped in the face of legal challenges.

Two federal appeals courts blocked the revised order from taking effect until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June it could move forward on a limited basis.

The nation’s highest court has agreed to hear oral arguments about the lawfulness of the ban on Oct. 10, and the brief laid out the legal position the government plans to make.

The state of Hawaii and refugee organizations challenging the executive order claim it is discriminatory against Muslims, citing statements Trump made on the campaign trail calling for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

However, the government, hammering against a broad ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that blocked the ban, said campaign statements made by the president when he was a private citizen should not be taken into account.

The brief said it was a mistake to probe the president’s motives in decisions about national security, which would amount to inappropriate “judicial psychoanalysis” of the president. Trump said the order was necessary to review vetting procedures to help protect the country from terrorist attacks.

The Department of Justice argued the case would “invite impermissible intrusion on privileged internal Executive Branch deliberations” and that the plaintiffs in the case were calling for “up to 30 depositions of White House staff and Cabinet-level officials.”

The government repeated its stance that Congress has granted the president wide authority to limit refugee admissions and bar the entry of any foreigner or group of foreigners if it would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

The Supreme Court ruled parts of the revised March executive order could go into effect on June 29, finding that anyone from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen with a “bona fide relationship” to a U.S. citizen or entity could not be barred.

However, the government excluded grandparents and other family members from the definition of who would be allowed in, leading to another round of legal sparring.

Eventually the Supreme Court said that, while litigation continues over enforcement of the ban in lower courts, grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, and siblings-in-law of people from the six countries would be let in but that refugees with relationships with U.S. resettlement agencies would not.

Attorney Neal Katyal, who is representing Hawaii in its challenge to the ban, said in an email on Thursday: “We look forward to the Supreme Court hearing our case in October.”

(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg; Additional reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Paul Tait)

Trump administration moves to make tougher U.S. visa vetting permanent

A sign warns of surveillance at the International Arrival area at Logan Airport in Boston.

By Yeganeh Torbati

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration moved on Thursday to make permanent a new questionnaire that asks some U.S. visa applicants to provide their social media handles and detailed biographical and travel history, according to a public notice.

The questionnaire was rolled out in May as part of an effort to tighten vetting of would-be visitors to the United States, and asks for all prior passport numbers, five years’ worth of social media handles, email addresses and phone numbers and 15 years of biographical information including addresses, employment and travel history. (See: http://bit.ly/2v0qsR2)

A State Department official declined to provide data on how many times the form had been used or which nationalities had been asked to fill it out since May, only stating that it estimates 65,000 visa applicants per year “will present a threat profile” that warrants the extra screening.

President Donald Trump ran for office in 2016 pledging to crack down on illegal immigration for security reasons, and has called for “extreme vetting” of foreigners entering the United States. On Wednesday, he threw his support behind a bill that would cut legal immigration to the United States by 50 percent over 10 years.

The Office of Management and Budget, which must approve most new federal requests of information from the public, initially approved the form on an “emergency” basis, which allowed its use for six months rather than the usual three years.

The State Department published a notice in the Federal Register on Thursday seeking to use the form for the next three years. The public has 60 days to comment on the request.

The questions are meant to “more rigorously evaluate applicants for terrorism, national security-related, or other visa ineligibilities,” the notice said.

While the questions are voluntary, the form says failure to provide the information may delay or prevent the processing of a visa application.

Trump ordered a temporary travel ban in March on citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. After months of legal wrangling, the Supreme Court in June allowed the travel ban to go forward with a limited scope.

The form does not target any particular nationality.

Seyed Ali Sepehr, who runs an immigration consultancy in California serving Iranian clients applying for U.S. visas, said that since late June, all of his clients who have been referred for extra security checks have also been asked to fill out the new form.

Kiyanoush Razaghi, an immigration attorney based in Maryland, said he knows of Iraqis, Libyans and Iranians who have been asked to fill out the form.

Immigration attorney Steve Pattison said one of his clients, who is not from one of the six travel ban countries, had been asked to fill out the new form when applying for a visitor visa, indicating that consular officers are using it broadly.

“It could be that everyone is missing another consequence of the use of the form – its deployment in a far wider sense to cover all sorts of individuals,” Pattison said.

 

(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; editing by Sue Horton and Grant McCool)

 

U.S. bans travel to North Korea from September 1, says Americans should leave

FILE PHOTO: People carry flags in front of statues of North Korea founder Kim Il Sung (L) and late leader Kim Jong Il during a military parade marking the 105th birth anniversary Kim Il Sung, in Pyongyang April 15, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

By Yeganeh Torbati

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A ban on travel by U.S. passport holders to North Korea will take effect on Sept. 1 and Americans in the country should leave before that date, the U.S. State Department said on Wednesday.

Journalists and humanitarian workers may apply for exceptions to the ban, the department said in a public notice.

The U.S. government last month said it would bar Americans from traveling to North Korea due to the risk of “long-term detention” there.

The ban comes at a time of heightened tensions between the United States and North Korea, which has been working to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the United States.

North Korea will become the only country to which Americans are banned from traveling.

American student Otto Warmbier, sentenced last year to 15 years’ hard labor in North Korea, returned to the United States in a coma on June 13 after being released on humanitarian grounds, and died June 19. The circumstances surrounding his death are not clear, including why he fell into a coma.

North Korea has said through its state media that Warmbier’s death was “a mystery” and dismissed accusations that he had died as a result of torture and beating in captivity.

The State Department issued a notice in the Federal Register on Wednesday declaring U.S. passports invalid for travel to, in or through North Korea. The restriction takes effect in 30 days, and applies for one year unless extended or revoked by the secretary of state.

“Persons currently in North Korea on a U.S. passport should depart North Korea before the travel restriction enters into effect on Friday, September 1, 2017,” the department said in a statement.

Professional reporters or journalists, representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross or the American Red Cross traveling on official missions, those traveling to North Korea for “compelling humanitarian considerations” and those whose requests are “in the national interest” may ask for a special validation of their passports in order to travel to the country, the State Department said.

North Korea is currently holding two Korean-American academics and a missionary, a Canadian pastor and three South Korean nationals who were doing missionary work. Japan says North Korea has also detained at least several dozen of its nationals.

(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati, David Brunnstrom and David Alexander; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and James Dalgleish)

Stranded Yemenis, thousands of others stand to lose ‘golden ticket’ to U.S.

Yemeni Rafek Ahmed Mohammed Al-Sanani (R), 22, and Abdel Rahman Zaid, 26 look through documents as they speak with Reuters in Serdang, on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia July 20, 2017.

By Riham Alkousaa and Yeganeh Torbati

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Yemen is urging the U.S. government to take in dozens of Yemenis who traveled to Malaysia in recent months expecting to immigrate to the United States, only to find themselves stranded by President Donald Trump’s temporary travel ban.

The ban, which was blocked by lower courts before being partially reinstated by the Supreme Court in June, temporarily bars citizens of Yemen and five other Muslim-majority countries with no “bona fide” connections to the United States from traveling there.

The Supreme Court ruling sharply limited the number of people affected by the ban. Largely unreported has been the fate of one group – thousands of citizens of the six countries who won a randomized U.S. government lottery last year that enabled them to apply for a so-called green card granting them permanent residence in the United States.

In a stroke of bad luck for the lottery winners, the 90-day travel ban will expire on Sept. 27, just three days before their eligibility for the green cards expires. Given the slow pace of the immigration process, the State Department will likely struggle to issue their visas in time.

A recent email from the U.S. government to lottery winners still awaiting their visas warned “it is plausible that your case will not be issuable” due to the travel ban.

The lottery attracts about 14 million applicants each year, many of whom view it as a chance at the “American Dream.” It serves as a potent symbol of U.S. openness abroad, despite the fact that the chance of success is miniscule – about 0.3 percent, or slightly fewer than 50,000, of lottery entrants actually got a green card in 2015.

The program helps to foster an image of America “as a country which welcomes immigrants and immigration from around the world, but also especially from Africa,” said Johnnie Carson, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs during the Obama administration.

Some former diplomats worry the travel ban’s impact on the lottery could tarnish that image of inclusiveness.

“Taking this away from people who have won it is the cruelest possible thing this administration could do,” said Stephen Pattison, a former senior State Department consular official. “It makes us look petty and cruel as a society.”

Reuters spoke to dozens of lottery winners from Yemen, Iran and Syria, including about 20 who are still waiting for their visas to be issued. Many declined to be named so as not to risk their applications but provided emails and other documents to help confirm their accounts.

They described having spent thousands of dollars on the application process, and many said they had delayed having children, sold property and turned down lucrative job offers at home because they assumed they would soon be moving to the United States.

 

AN ARDUOUS JOURNEY

For Yemenis, the situation is particularly difficult. Because the United States does not maintain a diplomatic post in Yemen, its citizens are assigned to other countries to apply for their visas, and many of them to travel to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The journey to a country 4,000 miles (6,400 km) away can be expensive and arduous for Yemenis, whose country, the Middle East’s poorest, is embroiled in a two-year conflict.

Most of the Yemenis who come to Malaysia make their first stop at a high-rise apartment building on the outskirts of the capital, where they have built a small community. Because of immigration restrictions, they are not allowed to work and are slowly running out of money. Most survive from funds donated by other Yemenis or sent by relatives back home.

“Imagine you get notified you got the golden ticket, only to have it yanked away,” said Joshua Goldstein, a U.S. immigration attorney who advises lottery winners.

The so-called “diversity visa” program was passed in its current form by Congress in 1990 to provide a path to U.S. residency for citizens from a range of countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States.

Because it has relatively few educational or professional requirements, it tends to attract people from poorer countries. In Ghana and Sierra Leone, for instance, more than 6 percent of the population in each of the West African nations entered the lottery in 2015.

Yemeni officials in Washington launched talks with the State Department this month to find a way to get dozens of Yemeni lottery winners into the United States despite the travel ban, said Yemen’s ambassador to the United States, Ahmed bin Mubarak.

“They’ve been in Malaysia for more than six months and sold everything in Yemen,” bin Mubarak said. “We are doing what we can.”

U.S. officials said they would work with Yemen’s government to help those who qualify for exceptions to the travel ban to be allowed in on a case-by-case basis, said Mohammed al-Hadhrami, a diplomat at Yemen’s embassy in Washington.

A State Department official declined to comment on how the United States was working with Yemen on the issue.

 

‘YANKED AWAY’

It is unclear exactly how many lottery winners are now caught up in the travel ban, which affects Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, but in 2015, more than 10,000 people from the six countries won the lottery, and 4,000 of them eventually got visas.

Yemeni officials provided Reuters with a list of Yemeni lottery winners, mostly in Malaysia, which they have also given to the State Department. It showed 58 Yemenis still waiting for a response to their applications, including some who have been stuck in security checks for more than eight months.

The State Department declined to comment on the figures, but departmental data shows that 206 Yemenis received diversity visas between March and June.

Following the June 26 Supreme Court ruling, State Department officials told lottery winners from the six countries that their visas would not be granted during the 90-day period the travel ban is in place unless they can demonstrate close family ties or other approved connections to a person or institution in the United States, according to an email seen by Reuters.

Yemeni officials are scrambling to help the country’s lottery winners demonstrate how they might qualify for an exemption and are also pushing to get a waiver for those who don’t have any relationships, Hadhrami said.

Rafek Ahmed al-Sanani, a 22-year-old farmer with a high school education, is among the Yemenis stuck in Malaysia. He traveled there in December via a route that included a 22-hour bus ride followed by flights to Egypt, Qatar and finally Malaysia.

“I was the first one to apply for the lottery in my family,” said Sanani, one of nine children in a family from Ibb governorate in Yemen’s north. “I want to come to the United States to learn English and continue my studies.”

Sanani said he had to borrow $10,000 to pay for his trip to Malaysia and living expenses. As he waits to hear the outcome of his application, he is resigned to his fate.

“What can I do?” he said. “I will accept reality.”

 

(Additional reporting by Rozanna Latif in Kuala Lumpur and Yara Bayoumy in Washington; Editing by Sue Horton and Ross Colvin)

 

Trump asks Supreme Court to block travel ban ruling

FILE PHOTO: Tom Bossert, Homeland Security Advisor to President Trump during a news briefing at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 11, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department on Friday asked the Supreme Court to block a judge’s ruling that prevented President Donald Trump’s travel ban from being applied to grandparents of U.S. citizens and refugees already being processed by resettlement agencies.

In a court filing, the administration asked the justices to overturn Thursday’s decision by a U.S. district judge in Hawaii, which limited the scope of the administration’s temporary ban on refugees and travelers from six Muslim-majority countries.

The latest round in the fight over Trump’s March 6 executive order, which he says is needed for national security reasons, came after the Supreme Court intervened last month to partially revive the two bans, which were blocked by lower courts.

The Supreme Court said then that the ban could take effect, but that people with a “bona fide relationship” to a U.S. person or entity could not be barred.

The administration had narrowly interpreted that language, saying the ban would apply to grandparents and other family members, prompting the state of Hawaii to ask Hawaii-based U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson to expand the definition of who could be admitted. He ruled for the state late on Thursday.

In the court filing, the Justice Department said the judge’s ruling “empties the (Supreme) Court’s decision of meaning, as it encompasses not just “close” family members but virtually all family members.

The conservative-leaning Supreme Court is not currently in session but the justices can handle emergency requests. The administration’s application could be directed either to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has responsibility for emergency requests from western states, or to the nine justices as a whole. If the court as a whole is asked to weigh in, five votes are needed to grant such a request.

“The truth here is that the government’s interpretation of the Supreme Court’s stay order defies common sense,” said Omar Jadwat, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union involved in challenging the ban. “That’s what the district court correctly found and the attorney general’s misleading attacks on its decision can’t change that fact.”

In his decision, Watson harshly criticized the government’s definition of close family relations as “the antithesis of common sense.”

Watson also ruled that the assurance by a resettlement agency to provide basic services to a newly arrived refugee constitutes an adequate connection to the United States because it is a sufficiently formal and documented agreement that triggers responsibilities and compensation.

In the court filing, the Justice Department said Watson’s ruling on refugees would make the Supreme Court’s decision on that part of the executive order “effectively meaningless.”

The ruling, if left in place, means refugees can continue to be resettled in the United States, beyond a cap of 50,000 set by the executive order. That limit was reached this week.

The Supreme Court’s decision last month revived parts of Trump’s March 6 executive order banning travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days, as well as refugees for 120 days. The court also agreed to hear oral arguments in the fall over whether the ban violates the U.S. Constitution.

 

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Ayesha Rascoe, Yeganeh Torbati and Dan Levine; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Bill Trott)