http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/travel-ban-hawaii_us_595594eee4b05c37bb7d3390
Mollie Reilly reports for HuffPost:
“Hawaii has filed a challenge to the State Department’s implementation of President Donald Trump’s travel ban, disputing the administration’s guidelines for what relationships to the U.S. are necessary to continue travel to the country.
Hawaii is challenging guidance issued by the State Department on Wednesday that says travelers from the six banned countries must have formal ties or close family relationships with someone or an entity within the U.S. Having familial ties “does not include grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, fiancés, and any other ‘extended’ family members,” the guidance said. (The State Department later said fiancés would, in fact, count as close family.)
In its motion, Hawaii asked a federal judge to clarify that the Trump administration can’t enforce those bans.
“The state of Hawaii is entitled to the enforcement of the injunction that it has successfully defended, in large part, up to the Supreme Court — one that protects the State’s residents and their loved ones from an illegal and unconstitutional Executive Order,” reads the state’s motion.
“In Hawaii, ‘close family’ includes many of the people that the federal government decided on its own to exclude from that definition,” said Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin. “Unfortunately, this severely limited definition may be in violation of the Supreme Court ruling.”
Trump signed the executive order, which seeks to ban travel to the U.S. for most nationals of six Muslim-majority countries for 90 days and suspend refugee resettlement for 120 days, in March.
The travel ban went into effect Thursday, three days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to partially reinstate a watered-down version of it before the court hears arguments on its constitutionality in October.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court specified that the ban could be implemented with the exception of individuals who have “a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United State.” The court, however, did not specify what qualifies as a “bona fide” relationship, thus leaving the matter up to State Department interpretation.
In March, Hawaii became the first state to sue to block Trump’s second attempt at a travel ban, which included citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, all majority-Muslim countries. In its suit, the state said its universities would be hurt by the ban because they would struggle to recruit faculty and students. It also argued that the ban would have a detrimental effect on tourism, critical to the state’s economy.”
*************************************
Stay tuned for the results!
PWS
06-30-17