Trump’s 7 country Muslim ban gets protests & Judge grants temp stay in refugee order
Resistance to US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on Muslim immigration has mounted quickly, with protests spreading across the country and the first legal challenge filed to an order branded as blatantly discriminatory.
Around 2,000 angry protesters flocked to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport after a dozen travellers were detained there, including two Iraqi men on Sunday, shortly after Trump signed the travel ban.
Large protests also took place at the main airports for Washington, Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Dallas, where USA Today said about 50 people were detained.
Mr Trump’s rival in his successful White House bid Hillary Clinton lent her support to the protests.
And a US federal judge has issued an emergency stay that temporarily blocks the government from sending people out of the country after they have landed at an American airport with valid visas.
The American Civil Liberties Union estimates the stay will affect 100 to 200 people detained at US airports or in transit, but government lawyers could not confirm that number.
Judge Ann Donnelly of the US District Court in New York made the order today.
The ruling is a massive blow to President Trump.
The US Department of Homeland Security says it’s monitoring litigation to do with President Donald Trump’s executive order affecting seven Muslim-majority countries but had not yet seen a copy of the emergency stay issued by a Federal Court.
Meanwhile, the President has spoken by phone with various world leaders, amid growing international alarm and a legal challenge over his moves to drastically limit Muslim immigration to the United States.
In a flurry of calls that started early in the morning and rounded out an already frantically paced week, Trump spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He also spoke to French President Francois Hollande before Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
The conversations gave the US president an early opportunity to explain new policies that have baffled and unnerved much of the rest of the world — particularly his order to temporarily halt all refugee arrivals and those of travellers from seven mainly Muslim countries including war-wracked Syria.
Credit: news.com.au
