Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Reinstate Travel Ban

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court Thursday to break its losing streak in lower courts and revive President Trump’s travel ban on immigrants from six predominantly Muslim nations.

The request came in three separate petitions to courts in Richmond, Va., and San Francisco that blocked the president’s executive order barring most immigrants from countries deemed at risk for terrorism, as well as international refugees.

Government lawyers asked the justices to let the travel ban go into effect even while they challenge the lower courts’ rulings. While that request faces an uphill battle, the high court ultimately could reverse the 4th Circuit and 9th Circuit courts after hearing the case, USA today reported.

“This order has been the subject of passionate political debate,” Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall said in legal papers. “But whatever one’s views, the precedent set by this case for the judiciary’s proper role in reviewing the president’s national-security and immigration authority will transcend this debate, this order, and this constitutional moment.”

Down version of the original travel ban issued a week after Trump’s inauguration in January. Chief Judge Roger Gregory said revisions removing any mention of religion from the second executive order did not hide the real motive: “President Trump’s desire to exclude Muslims from the United States.”

“From the highest elected office in the nation has come an executive order steeped in animus and directed at a single religious group,” Gregory said in the 79-page opinion, which was accompanied by concurrences and dissents from his colleagues.