A federal judge in Wisconsin on Friday ruled against President Trump’s revised travel ban in a singular case regarding the wife and child of a Syrian refugee who had relocated to the U.S. in 2014.
U.S. District Judge William Conley issued a temporary restraining order on behalf of the plaintiff’s mother and child who had already been granted asylum by the U.S.
The names of the individuals affected were unpublished to protect their identities, but the plaintiff is a Sunni Muslim who fled to the U.S. more than two years earlier. He attained asylum for his wife and child, but their travel to the U.S. was halted following Trump’s original Jan. 27 executive order temporarily suspending immigration from seven countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
“The court appreciates that there may be important differences between the original executive order, and the revised executive order,” Conley wrote in his decision. “As the order applies to the plaintiff here, however, the court finds his claims have at least some chance of prevailing for the reasons articulated by other courts.”
Conley was appointed by former President Barack Obama, but concluded the plaintiff “has presented some likelihood of success on the merits” of its case and that the family would face “significant risk of irreparable harm” if they could not leave Syria.
Trump’s March 1 announced order is set to go into effect next Wednesday and would exclude Iraqi citizens, legal permanent residents and existing visa holders from a list of six countries whose residents cannot enter the U.S. for 90 days.
A number of states have taken new legal action against the revised order. Previously, Washington state and a handful of states sued the administration for the president’s actions to temporarily suspend immigration from Somalia, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Libya and Yemen. More than 20 parties launched suits against the federal government, claiming it discriminated against Muslim-majority countries.
In February, Seattle-based U.S. District Judge James Robart ruled in favor of a lawsuit by Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson. The restraining order was granted on a national level and took effect immediately, causing the Trump administration to rewrite the order.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals later preliminarily ruled in favor of Washington, forcing the White House to go back to the drawing board on its plan.
