On Friday, in the broadest such ruling so far, U.S. District Court Senior Judge James L. Robart ordered a temporary nationwide end to significant parts of the Trump regime’s Muslim ban. For now, anyone with a U.S. visa or green card can fly into the United States just as they could before. The Department of Homeland Security announced Saturday that it will immediately comply with the judge’s ruling. See commentary here by First Amendment.
Pr*sident Trump's order was directed at citizens of Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Yemen. Trump called Robart’s judgment “ridiculous” and on Saturday morning tweeted:
That sparked some replies from on high:
Before a stunning array of spontaneous airport protests broke out across the country and federal judges like Robart took turns blocking various parts of the ruling, many residents with green cards who had been traveling abroad or with approved visas were not allowed to board planes or were turned back once they arrived in the States. The count of people who were directly affected is just an estimate, but the State Department noted on Friday that the number of canceled visas amounted to less than 60,000, not the 100,000 the Justice Department had estimated at a federal court hearing in Virginia.
Whatever the actual total, tens of thousands of visa holders, plus unknown numbers of green-card holders, had their travel plans—many of them in the works for years—disrupted by the White House’s executive order. No doubt, many of them lost money because of the ban—millions of dollars all told—and had their lives turned upside down, at least in the short run.
The ban also affected the outlook of their families, their friends, their colleagues, and millions of their fellow citizens. In the case of green-card holders, many of them people who love this country more than some Americans who were born here, it has created fear for what Trump and his crew may do in the future given the regime’s stance on immigration.
And then there were the indirect effects, one of which is the anger and bad feelings about the United States that the ban has engendered or reinforced abroad among people who will never have a green card or a visa but whose views could affect how their nations’ leaders relate to the U.S.
These views won’t go away anytime soon. While the courts may ultimately rule that the ban, or big parts of it, were out of line, the diplomatic and other damage Trump caused by this move will plague the United States for years after he is no longer sitting behind the big desk in the Oval Office. Two weeks on the job and he’s already created more havoc than most newly-seated leaders around the world create in their first year or two in office. Some Americans, including members of Congress, obviously think that’s a good thing. It ain’t.