WASHINGTON: The Trump administration can stop approving new refugees for entry into the US but has to allow in people who were conditionally accepted before the president suspended the nation\u2019s refugee admissions system, an appeals court ruled Tuesday.
\nThe order narrowed a ruling from a federal judge in Seattle who found the program should be restarted.
\nThe three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals said the president has the power to restrict people from entering the country, pointing to a 2018 Supreme Court ruling upholding President Donald Trump\u2019s ban on travel from several mostly Muslim countries during his first term.
\nRefugees who were conditionally approved by the government before Trump\u2019s order halting the refugee program should still be allowed to resettle, the judges found.
\nThe panel ruled on an emergency appeal of a ruling from US District Judge Jamal Whitehead who found that the president\u2019s authority to suspend refugee admissions is not limitless and that Trump cannot nullify the law passed by Congress establishing the program.
\nWhitehead pointed to reports of refugees stranded in dangerous places, families separated from relatives in the US and people sold all their possessions for travel to the US that was later canceled.
\nMelissa Keaney, an attorney with the International Refugee Assistance Project, applauded the portions of the order that the appeals court left intact.
\n\u201cWe welcome this continued relief for tens of thousands of refugees who will now have the opportunity to restart their lives in the United States,\u201d she said.
\nWhitehead, who was nominated by Democratic President Joe Biden, also issued a second order Tuesday blocking the cancelation of refugee resettlement contracts.
\nTrump\u2019s order said the refugee program \u2014 a form of legal migration to the US for people displaced by war, natural disaster or persecution \u2014 would be suspended because cities and communities had been taxed by \u201crecord levels of migration\u201d and didn\u2019t have the ability to \u201cabsorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees.\u201d There are 600,000 people being processed to come to the US as refugees around the world, according to the administration.
\nThe Justice Department argued that the order was well within Trump\u2019s authority.
\nDespite long-standing support from both major political parties for accepting thoroughly vetted refugees, the program has become politicized in recent years. Trump also temporarily halted it during his first term, and then dramatically decreased the number of refugees who could enter the US each year.
\nThe plaintiffs said the president had not shown how the entry of these refugees would be detrimental to the US
\nThey include the International Refugee Assistance Project on behalf of Church World Service, the Jewish refugee resettlement agency HIAS, Lutheran Community Services Northwest, and individual refugees and family members. They said their ability to provide critical services to refugees, including those already in the US, has been severely inhibited by Trump\u2019s order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: The Trump administration can stop approving new refugees for entry into the US but has to allow in people who were conditionally accepted before the president suspended the nation\u2019s refugee admissions system, an appeals court ruled Tuesday. The order narrowed a ruling from a federal judge in Seattle who found the program should be …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":62443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78926,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78908\/revisions\/78926"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}