January 29, 2017

A Federal Judge Just Issued a Stay Against Donald Trump’s “Muslim Ban”

Judge Ann M. Donnelly’s ruling halted deportations, but refugees abroad remain in limbo.


A federal judge in Brooklyn issued an emergency stay Saturday night against President Donald Trump’s executive order banning immigration from certain predominantly Muslim countries, temporarily allowing people who have landed in the United States with a valid visa to remain.

The ruling—a stunning defeat for Trump at the end of his first week in office—protects from deportation refugees or visa holders who were detained at American airports since the signing of so-called “Muslim ban.” It also protects those in transit when the emergency ruling was filed.

The lawsuit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of two men detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. The men were subsequently released. Cody Wofsy, a lawyer with the ACLU, told Mother Jones he’d worked though the night with a large group of attorneys on Friday to write the brief that challenged the executive order.

The director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project announced the victory on Twitter:

The stay, granted by Judge Ann M. Donnelly of the US District Court, is temporary, and a court will have to decide whether to make it permanent at a later date. But for now, people will not be deported because of Trump’s executive order.

One Syrian woman was reportedly about to be sent back to her home country when the ruling came down—and was promptly taken off the flight by Customs and Border Protection agents.

Wofsy, the ACLU lawyer, said he planned to stay at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday night to make sure those who are detained there are not removed in violation of the judge’s order. 

“This executive order runs contrary to really our most fundamental constitutional rights and human values in this country,” Wofsy said. “These individuals, many of whom have green cards and have lived here for many years, can’t just be put on a plane and shipped off.”

You can read the judge’s full order here:

 

 

And the ACLU’s original complaint below:

 

 

This is a developing story. We’ll update as more news comes in.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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