KAILUA-KONA — The state’s attorney general on Friday announced the filing of a lawsuit against the president over a controversial executive order that restricts certain citizens of seven countries from entering the United States.
That same day, a federal judge hearing a similar challenge brought by the states of Washington and Minnesota issued a temporarily halt on the order, effective nationwide.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court, seeks to stop the implementation of the Jan. 27 order entitled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.”
The order restricts immigration from seven countries, namely Iraq, Iran, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Yemen. All of them are Muslim-majority countries.
The president’s order restricts admission to the states from those countries for 120 days and bars the entry of Syrian refugees indefinitely.
Attorney General Doug Chin, however, argues that the order violates the U.S. Constitution, relying heavily on President Donald Trump’s own statements made during his presidential campaign.
“This order is the beginning of the fulfillment of President Trump’s campaign pledge to implement a ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,’” stated the Department of the Attorney General in a release announcing the lawsuit.
David Ross, chairman of the West Hawaii Republicans, said he’s not surprised that the lawsuit was filed, saying the current environment seems to be “to challenge anything Trump does.”
However, he said, he believes the lawsuit could do some good by bringing clarity to some of the “underlying issues that aren’t being made clear on both sides of this discussion.”
“I think it’s a good process to go through the lawsuits,” he said.
On Jan. 31, the state of Washington became the first to announce a lawsuit against the president over the order.
Bob Ferguson, attorney general for that state, called the order “un-American and unlawful,” according to the Associated Press.
Minnesota joined that lawsuit two days later and, on Friday, the federal judge hearing that case temporarily blocked the ban. The Washington Post reported that the ruling applies nationwide.
The Hawaii lawsuit alleges four violations of the U.S. Constitution, specifically the First and Fifth amendments, and two additional violations of federal law.
The filing argues that two sections of the order, including the part that prioritizes refugee claims of religious-based persecution made by members of religious minorities in the identified countries, “are intended to disfavor Islam and favor Christianity.”
That, the suit argues, is a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which bars the federal government from favoring any religion over another.
The filing repeatedly relies on statements Trump made about immigration by Muslims, including a December 2015 press release in which Trump called “for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
That press release was still on the president’s campaign website as of Friday afternoon.
The president in his campaign later turned his attention to “extreme vetting” from countries with a “proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies.”
Ross said the executive order is not a “Muslim ban,” noting that most Muslim-majority countries aren’t covered in the order.
“The (executive order) is focused on seven countries in the Middle East that either sponsor terrorism or are subject to substantial terrorist violence,” he said.
The waiting period, he said, “will provide the United States time to develop more effective vetting procedures to better protect U.S. citizens from terrorist violence.”
Chin in the lawsuit said Trump’s executive order is “antithetical to Hawaii’s state identity and spirit,” referencing the Chinese Exclusion Acts, a 19th-century law that barred the immigration of Chinese laborers, and the World War II-era internment of Japanese-Americans.
“When you’re talking about orders that are discriminating against people of national origin, you have to stake a stand. We can’t just allow this to go on and hope that it doesn’t get worse,” Chin’s quoted as saying in an AP report. “That’s my concern. Every time the ball moves a little bit closer to detaining people or to rounding people up, or to putting people into different places all in the all in the name of national security — that’s repeating a time in history that none of us want to repeat.”
The lawsuit asks the judge to declare the relevant sections of the order unconstitutional and bar their enforcement.