Immigration rights groups on Monday were unhappy with President Trump’s revised executive order on immigration, but stopped short of saying they would challenge it in court or find other ways to fight it.
The new order, which takes effect on March 16, makes it so people from Sudan, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia and Yemen who are outside the United States and don’t have a valid visa are “not eligible to travel” to the country for 90 days.
The American Civil Liberties Union was part of the successful stay by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that caused Trump to revise the ban in the first place. That group said Monday that Trump’s new version of the ban is still not acceptable.
“The Trump administration has conceded that its original Muslim ban was indefensible. Unfortunately, it has replaced it with a scaled-back version that shares the same fatal flaws,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “President Trump has recommitted himself to religious discrimination, and he can expect continued disapproval from both the courts and the people.”
On Twitter, the ACLU promised to “keep fighting” the new order.
In Washington, Attorney General Bob Ferguson — whose case against the initial order also helped bring it down last month — said his office is reviewing the revised order “carefully” and anticipates giving an update on the next legal steps sometime this week.
“By rescinding his earlier executive order, President Trump makes one thing perfectly clear: His original travel ban was indefensible — legally, constitutionally and morally,” Ferguson said in a prepared statement.
Though the Immigration Legal Resource Center is not involved in any lawsuits pertaining to the executive order, the group still finds it to be “disastrous and unconstitutional.”
“Don’t be fooled: today’s revisions to the Trump administration’s disastrous and unconstitutional Muslim ban still result in public policy fueled by hate and steeped in racial and ethnic discrimination,” Bill Ong Hing, founder of ILRC, said in a statement.
Other groups are also calling the revisions to be futile.
“Donald Trump’s new Muslim ban is nothing more than a cheap, lawyered-up copy of the Muslim ban that was correctly struck down by federal courts just a few weeks ago,” Democracy for America’s Executive Director Charles Chamberlain said, adding, “This absurd, destructive ban not only violates the Constitution, it directly aids terrorist recruiters in ways that will make our country less safe.”
The American Defamation League condemned the order and said it will be challenged in court. In a statement, CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said, “[t]he message is the same: that Muslims and refugees who are fleeing for their lives are not welcome on our shores. This is an appeal to xenophobia and fear.”
