Federal judge in LA orders a temporary halt to Trump’s travel ban

LOS ANGELES – A federal judge in Los Angeles has added another legal challenge to President Donald Trump’s controversial suspension of travel from a group of predominantly Muslim countries, issuing an emergency order that forbids government officials from enforcing the new rules.

Using sweeping, unambiguous language, U.S. District Judge Andre Birotte Jr. on Tuesday night granted a temporary restraining order against the executive order Trump signed late last week.

Birotte’s ruling came in a case hastily filed Tuesday on behalf of 28 Yemeni-born people. The group consists of United States citizens living here and family members who remained behind in Yemen but had received visas to come to the U.S., according to court filings.

Finding that the plaintiffs stand a good chance of prevailing when the case is heard in court and are “likely to suffer irreparable harm” if he didn’t act, Birotte instructed that the plaintiffs be allowed entry into the U.S.

Birotte, however, went further, granting a request from the plaintiffs’ lawyers that his ruling be applied to anyone trying to enter the U.S. on a valid visa from the seven countries included in Trump’s immigration ban.

The executive order, which Trump has said will better protect the country against terrorist attacks, blocks citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from coming to the U.S. for at least 90 days. It also imposes a ban for 120 days on refugees from any country entering the U.S. and bars refugees from Syria indefinitely.

Critics of the ban have expressed concern it will do little to improve security while alienating Muslims.

The president’s order, which polls show is supported by about half of Americans, was issued Friday and met with angry protests and confusion at several U.S. airports as border control officers refused entry to hundreds of people and detained others for long periods as they scrambled to understand the scope of the new rules.

Whether Birotte’s order will have any impact is an open question. A handful of federal judges elsewhere in the country have already issued rulings that blocked aspects of the executive order, but it is unclear whether they have been followed. In one of the rulings, a judge in New York on Saturday ordered a halt to deportations of travelers who arrived at airports with valid visas to enter the U.S. countries. Despite that order, however, reports surfaced in Los Angeles and elsewhere of people being turned back.

Notably, in his ruling, Birotte forbade federal officials from “removing, detaining or blocking the entry” of affected travelers or “cancelling validly obtained and issued immigrant visas of plaintiffs.” The wording would seen to mean that government officials would not be allowed to continue the practice of instructing airlines and border officials in other countries to stop people from the affected countries from boarding planes bound for the U.S.

Calls to the Department of Justice were not immediately returned.