Thursday, March 30, 2017

The Court did so by converting what had been a temporary restraining order (TRO) barring the Trump Administration from implementing key portions of the President's March 6, 2017, revised refugee admissions/travel ban executive order into a preliminary injunction.  Absent intervention from a higher court, the ruling effectively blocks the implementation of much of the embattled executive order until the lawsuit challenging it is resolved.

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

The question to be examined during the Wednesday hearing is a motion by the state of Hawaii to convert the temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction, which would bar the Administration from implementing the enjoined sections until the litigation over the matter is resolved.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

The document released today, titled, "America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again," is 62 pages long and contains quite a bit of language relating to immigration enforcement and border security funding.  However, it contains few (if any) specifics on refugee-, human trafficking-, unaccompanied alien child-, immigration services-related matters..  Indeed, the word "refugee" only appears in the document twice and the words "unaccompanied" or "trafficking" never appear in the document.  But the word "alien" appears seven times and the word "border" appears on 22 occasions.

In addition to submitting his FY 18 Budget Blueprint, the President has also submitted a supplemental appropriations request for FY 17 that  includes an ask for $30 BILLION in additional FY 17 funding for the Department of Defense and $3 BILLION for the Department of Homeland security. 

The DHS portion of the supplemental request includes $1.5 BILLION in additional funding to help pay the costs for the construction of a wall between the United States and Mexico, $1.2 BILLION to pay for detention, transportation, and removal of illegal aliens, and for alternatives to detention; $76 million to build hiring capacity to recruit and bring on board 10,000 ICE agents and officers; $5 million for homeland security investigations intelligence activities; and $5 million to support the expansion of the Section 287(g) Program.

Thursday, March 16, 2017
Updated - 10:14 am on March 16, 2017

The Order, issued by Judge Derrick K. Watson, United States District Judge for the District of Hawaii, prevents the Administration from implementing sections 2 and 6 of the March 6th executive order.  Section 2 seeks to impose a 90-day ban on travel to the United States for persons possessing travel documents from six predominately-Muslim countries.  Section 6 contains a number of refugee-related provisions, including one that would impose a 120-day "pause" in the admission of refugees to the United States.

At the time of this writing, two other courts  -- one in Maryland and another in Seattle -- were considering arguments made to them during the day on Wednesday in lawsuits seeking to block the implementation of the executive order.  They could issue rulings at any time.  Indeed, there were indications during the pre-dawn hours of Thursday, March 16th, that the Court in Maryland had, indeed, decided to enjoin parts of the executive order and would be making a formal announcement after daybreak.

[UPDATE - At 7:00 am EDT on Thursday, March 16, 2017, a Federal District Court in Maryland Issued a a preliminary injunction enjoining the Administration from implementing the travel ban portion of the March 6th executive order but declining to enjoin implementation of the refugee portions of that executive order].