Appeals Court Makes Moves for the Review of Immigrant Vetting

Late this Monday, the federal appeals court formally cleared the way for portions of President Trump’s revised controversial ban blocking travel to the US.  The most controversial provisions of the executive order, however, still remained tied up in courts.

The current administration now has the ability to conduct internal reviews of other countries’ vetting procedures for visa applications, however, the broader case is still on review in the Supreme Court. A three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals widely affirmed a lower court’s decision to stop the core provisions of the President;s revised executive order last week, which attempted to restrict travel from 6 largely Muslim countries. The order would also block refugees.

The 9th Circuit Court ruled that the US District Court Judge Derrick Watson’s decision was overly broad in regards to certain respects, and proceeded to reverse portions of the Judge’s ruling which prevented the administration from conducting internal reviews of other countries’ procedures. Secretary John Kelly called this move a “big win” in an interview with CNN reporter Tal Kopan last week.

The 9th Circuit panel explained that this part of their ruling “was not narrowly tailored to addressing only the harms alleged.” They have also stated that “for example, internal determinations regarding the necessary information for visa application adjudications do not have an obvious relationship to the constitutional rights at stake or statutory conflicts at issue here. Plaintiffs have not shown how the government’s internal review of its vetting procedures will harm them.”

While normally, the 9th Circuit’s decision would sit for about 50 days while the parties attempt to tie up loose ends, last week the Justice Department instead asked the court for a rather quick mandate to make the decision it made June 12 take effect immediately. The court granted this request on Monday, thus allowing these portions of the executive order to proceed.

Although several legal experts have cautioned that this “win” for the Trump administration could have unintended effects.

Steve Vladeck, a legal analyst for CNN and a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, claims that while, “Procedurally, this is a narrow, but significant, victory for the government,” it may however, “have the opposite effect substantively. The stated purpose of the entry ban was to allow the government to conduct this internal review. If it’s now able to conduct that review while the ban itself remains on hold, that may undermine the justification for the ban in the first place.”

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