3/15/2017

IMMIGRATION/LEGAL/TRAVEL BAN/TRUMP EXEC ORDERS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Advocates head to court Wednesday [3-15-17] to make last ditch-pleas to head off President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban without some of their most potent weapons: scenes of chaos as travelers were detained at airports across the country during Trump’s first attempt two months ago.
Apparently by design, Trump’s narrowed executive order will have its most major impacts in refugee camps, grim hotels where visa applicants wait for appointments at U.S. embassies and in countries hostile to the U.S. or lacking any functioning government at all.
Lawyers pressing the case against the new Trump directive acknowledge the challenge they face in conveying the urgency and immediacy of the threat posed by Trump’s redrafted order, set to kick in at 12:01 A.M. Thursday.
‘The Trump administration may believe they’ve written a more palatable ban, but the intent remains the same,’ said Melissa Keaney of the National Immigration Law Center. ‘The roll-out may be less rushed or visibly catastrophic than the first one, but allowing more lead time to discriminate doesn’t make the discrimination any less harmful or unlawful.’
Rolling out the new order without the confusion, delays and deportations that surrounded the first one is clearly a top Trump administration priority — although it is solving a problem that the president has publicly denied exists.
‘The roll-out was perfect,’ Trump told reporters last month last month.
Nevertheless, a senior Department of Homeland Security official pledged last week that the tangible effect of the order in the U.S. will be minimal.”

-John Gerstien, “Lawyers refocus attack for Trump travel ban 2.0,” Politico, March 15, 2017