Thread: Refugees, migrants detained at U.S. airports challenge Trump’s executive orders

Refugees, migrants detained at U.S. airports challenge Trump’s executive orders

An aircraft takes off from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport in this file photo from May 2015. Two Iraqi refugees are being detained there after they were refused entry following President Trump’s executive order halting refu*gee admissions to the United States. (Trevor Collens/AFP/Getty Images)

By Emma Brown and David Nakamura
January 28 at 11:45 AM

Refugees and migrants holding valid visas who were en route to the United States on Friday evening have been detained at U.S. airports and restricted from the country as a result of President Trump’s executive order banning their entry.

Lawyers for two Iraqi men detained at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport filed a middle-of-the-night lawsuit in federal court challenging Trump’s executive order as unconstitutional and seeking the release of their clients.

They also are seeking class certification so they may represent all refugees and visa-holders who are being held at U.S. ports of entry.

Immigration advocates say at least one refugee family is detained at San Francisco International Airport, but it is not clear how many refugees are currently detained at airports nationwide.

[Read the complaint]

Trump’s executive order suspends admission of all refugees for 120 days and bars for 90 days the entry of any citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries, including Iraq, even if they have valid visas. Trump said that the goal is to screen out “radical Islamic terrorists” and that priority for admission would be given to Christians.

Trump's executive order on refugees, explained
Play Video1:47
President Trump signed an executive order halting all refugees from entering the U.S. for 120 days, among other provisions. Here's what the order says. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

The executive order drew immediate condemnation from advocates for refugees and from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which announced plans to file a lawsuit next week challenging Trump’s order as unconstitutional.

“There is no evidence that refugees — the most thoroughly vetted of all people entering our nation — are a threat to national security,” Lena F. Masri, CAIR’s national litigation director, said in a statement. “This is an order that is based on bigotry, not reality.”

Both Iraqi men now detained at JFK held valid U.S. visas and had been receiving pro-bono legal assistance for several months from the New York-based International Refugee Assistance Project. Betsy Fisher, the organization’s policy director, said the men were in the air on separate flights when Trump signed the temporary ban on refugees Friday.

She called their detention “our worst-case scenario.”

“In the coming weeks we will be advocating to show why this policy is bad for U.S. national security, why it goes against our humanitarian responsibilities, and why it is fundamentally un-American,” Fisher said. “If there is one fundamentally American value then it is welcoming those who are fleeing persecution. At our best, this is what we can do.”

One of the Iraqi men detained at JFK, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, 53, had worked as a contractor for the U.S. government in Iraq for about a decade, including as an interpreter for the Army. He and his wife and three children had spent more than two years securing a special immigrant visa, granted to Iraqis who assisted U.S. military forces.

The Darweesh family landed in New York at approximately 6 p.m. Friday evening, and Hameed Darweesh was detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. He has not been allowed to speak with his attorneys and is at risk of being returned to a country where he faces enormous risks to his personal security due to his aid to the U.S. government, the complaint says.

The other detainee is Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, 33, who holds a visa that allowed him to join his wife and young child in Texas. His wife had worked for a U.S. government contractor and came to the United States as a refugee in 2014.Marielena Hincapie, executive director for the National Immigration Law Center, said immigration advocates first learned of immigrants being detained Friday evening after a report from a family detained in San Francisco. The advocates attempted to reach U.S. Customs and Border Protection but were unsuccessful.

“We were trying to find out if it was lack of communication or what was the plan?” she said in an interview Saturday morning.

[Trump signs order halting admission of refugees, promises priority for Christians]

Then they learned of the two immigrants from Iraq who had been detained at JFK Airport.

“We don’t have any guidance” from U.S. officials, Hincapie said. “That’s when we decided to file.”

Lawyers for the two Iraqis held in New York have been unable to speak to their clients. When the lawyers asked to speak with them, Customs and Border Protection agents at JFK said that they were not the ones to field such a request.

“Who is the person to talk to?” the attorneys asked, according to the complaint. The CBP agents responded: “Mr. President. Call Mr. Trump.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...32c_story.html

Just announced that one of the 2 has been released, the others being looked into. There may be some others, may 10 more, according to a Congressman Nadler, who have been caught up in the timing of this and they're working through it now.

As a foot note, the story line now is these people helped the US in Iraq so they should be given refugee status to the US. No, that is wrong. If someone helps the US in Iraq and they are Iraqis, they are not helping the US, they are helping Iraq, their home country. Military needs to be careful in promising any more of this. If Iraqis helping Iraq and then US as a side line, as interpreters, engineers or whatever, they need to be doing this for Iraq, not for US. I'm not saying can it all, I'm just saying, don't include that as a reward for fighting or doing whatever to help their own nation. If there's some risk in one city fighting ISIS, then when they're finished, they should move to another part of Iraq. I'm sure they were well-paid for their services, probably more than our troops.

Once again, the Washington Post may have to retract.

Trump’s Order Blocks Immigrants at Airports, Stoking Fear Around Globe

12 refugees detained under ban after Trump's order; one released

Published January 28, 2017 FoxNews.com

Twelve refugees were detained at JFK Airport within hours of President Trump's order restricting immigration from seven majority-Muslim nations.

One of the Iraqis, Hameed Jhalid Darweesh, 53, was released by midday Saturday. “I suffered to move here, to get my family here …. I can’t go back,” Darweesh said shortly after his release, according to the New York Post. Asked if he’d be killed in Iraq, he answered: “Yes, yes.”

Hameed Khalid Darweesh, an Army interpreter in Iraq, had been stopped as he traveled with his wife and three kids when agents pulled him aside, according to the New York Times.

The fate of the other Iraqi detainee, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, 33, was unclear. So was the fate of 10 other refugees, whose nationalities were not immediately known.

Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan) and Nydia Velazquez (D-Brooklyn) announced the number of refugees held at the airport. “This should not happen in America. We shouldn’t have to demand the release of refugees one by one,” the two members of Congress said in a statement.

"They have been detained illegally. I am begging you to go and revisit this. It's ill-advised, it's mean spirited," said Velazquez, during a press conference.

The White House moved Saturday to defend the president’s refugee order, saying Muslims are not being targeted.

“The notion that this is a ‘Muslim ban’ is ludicrous,” a senior administration official confirmed to Fox News.

Other travelers were being stopped from boarding U.S.-bound flights at overseas airports as the Trump refugee ban went into effect Friday night.

Early Saturday, immigration lawyers in New York sued to block the order, claiming that numerous people have already been unlawfully detained at U.S. airports, Reuters reported.

Trump on Friday suspended refugee admissions for four months and indefinitely banned those from war-torn Syria, pending program changes that are to ensure refugees won't harm national security.

A U.S. federal law enforcement official says any non-U.S. citizen from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia or Yemen is now barred from entering the United States.

That covers legal permanent residents -- green card holders -- and visa-holders from those seven countries who are out of the United States after Friday, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order with the temporary ban. They cannot return to the U.S. for 90 days.

The official says there's an exemption for immigrants and legal permanent residents whose entry is in the U.S. national interest, but it's unclear how that exemption will be applied.

The official says visa and green card holders already in the U.S. will be allowed to stay. The official wasn't authorized to publicly discuss the details of how Trump's order is being put in place and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Customs and Border Protection is notifying airlines about passengers whose visas had been canceled or legal residents scheduled to fly back to the U.S., and the airlines are being told to keep them off those flights.

The order also imposes a temporary ban on travelers from Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Sudan and Yemen.

Immigration lawyers filed papers in Brooklyn Federal Court seeking the release of the two Iraqis and an order certifying the case as a class-action on behalf of others who they said were being illegally detained at ports of entry, according to the paper.

The lawyers said custom agents wouldn’t let them meet with their clients who they said had valid visas to enter the U.S.

“Who is the person we need to talk to?” asked Mark Doss, a lawyer with the International Refugee Assistance Project.

“Mr. President,” the paper quoted a customs agent as responding. “Call Mr. Trump.”

The ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project is also representing the two Iraqis.

“President Trump's war on equality is already taking a terrible human toll. This ban cannot be allowed to continue,” the group's Omar Jadwat said.

In Cairo, airport officials prevented seven U.S.-bound migrants -- six from Iraq and one from Yemen -- from boarding an EgyptAir flight to New York.

The officials said the seven migrants, escorted by officials from the U.N. refugee agency, were stopped from boarding the plane after authorities at Cairo airport contacted their counterparts at JFK.

Qatar Airways told passengers bound for the U.S. from the seven newly banned majority Muslim countries that they need to have either a U.S. green card or diplomatic visa to travel.

A statement on the company's website says: "Nationals of the following countries: Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen ... may travel to the U.S. only if they are in possession of a permanent resident card (Green card) or any of the below visas."

It listed foreign government, United Nations, international organization and NATO visas.

Late Friday, the International Rescue Committee called Trump's suspension of the U.S. refugee resettlement program a "harmful and hasty" decision.

The group’s president David Miliband said, "America must remain true to its core values. America must remain a beacon of hope."

He said the U.S. vetting process for prospective refugees is already robust -- involving biometric screening and up to 36 months of vetting by "12 to 15 government agencies."

“This is no time for America to turn its back on people ready to become patriotic Americans,” he said.

The Associated Press and Fox News' Wes Barrett contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/01/28...-airports.html

Trump Defends Order, ' It's Not a Muslim Ban'


January 28, 2017

President Trump on Saturday denied that one of his latest executive orders barring many refugees and entry to individuals from several predominantly Muslim nations amounted to a ban on Muslims.


"It's not a Muslim ban, but we are totally prepared," Trump told media gathered in the Oval Office as he signed three new executive orders on Saturday afternoon.


"It's working out very nicely. You see it in the airports, you see it all over. It's working out very nicely and we are going to have a very, very strict ban and we are going to have extreme vetting, which we should have had in this country for many years," Trump said.


Trump's order bars Syrian refugees and halts the country's refugee resettlement program for four months, while denying entry to individuals from seven majority-Muslim countries.


Democrats and human rights groups slammed his order Friday, comparing it to the ban on Muslims entering the U.S. that Trump proposed on the campaign trail in late 2015.

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/316703-trump-defends-order-its-not-a-muslim-ban

Action! Thank you Mr. President!

Rep. Charlie Dent, who has a grade of " F" from NumbersUSA is making the rounds on media to decry the executive actions of President Trump. He says it could hurt people and divide families. He said he would support some type of pause but this is much broader. His constituents are contacting him, there are people with VISAs in hand that had to return to another country.

Rep. Dent has been faithful in his criticism of President Trump,

Good, maybe now AMERICAN families will not be hurt and divided...torn apart by this massive invasion of our Country, our neighborhoods and OUR wallets!