A U.S. White House official launched a blistering attack on the federal appeals court that blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration on Sunday, calling its ruling a “judicial usurpation of power.”
The Trump administration has faced multiple legal setbacks to its travel ban issued on Jan. 27, and the Republican president has said he may issue a new executive order rather than go through lengthy court challenges.
“The president’s powers here are beyond question,” White House adviser Stephen Miller said on the Fox News Sunday program. Miller referred to immigration law that the executive order is based on that gives the U.S. president broad powers to restrict who enters the country on national security grounds.
However, the same law forbids discrimination on race, sex, nationality or place of birth or residence. The case also could involve First Amendment protections involving religion.
The executive order Trump issued banned entry into the United States to refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, triggering nationwide protests and legal challenges.
A week later, a federal judge in Seattle issued a temporary restraining order that put the president’s travel ban on hold, eliciting a barrage of angry Twitter messages from Trump.
The judge’s suspension was upheld by a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Thursday.
Miller, appearing on several television news shows, criticized the court and its ruling.
“The Ninth Circuit has a long history of being overturned and the Ninth Circuit has a long history of overreaching,” he said on the Fox news show. “This is a judicial usurpation of power.”
The powers to restrict entry into the United States “represent the very apex of presidential authority,” he added. “We have multiple options and we are considering all of them,” Miller said while appearing on ABC’s This Week.
Those include formulating a new executive action, appealing the Ninth Circuit panel’s decision to the full appeals court and appealing the emergency stay to the Supreme Court, he said.
State attorney says he’ll uncover ‘what truly motivated’ travel ban
If the Seattle lawsuit goes to trial, Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson said on Sunday he will depose Trump administration officials to uncover “what truly motivated” the president’s executive order.
Documents and emails authored by administration officials may contain evidence that the order was an unconstitutional attempt to ban Muslims from entering the United States, and Ferguson will use “every tool” at his disposal to bring those to light, he told ABC’s This Week.
Trump praises immigration ‘enforcement surge’
Trump Sunday praised the actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers for the recent “enforcement surge” that officials say is targeting immigrants who are in the country illegally and have criminal records.
Trump tweeted that “the crackdown on illegal criminals is merely the keeping of my campaign promise. Gang members, drug dealers & others are being removed!”
The crackdown on illegal criminals is merely the keeping of my campaign promise. Gang members, drug dealers & others are being removed!
Advocacy groups contend the government has rounded large numbers of people as part of stepped-up enforcement. The agency calls the effort no different from enforcement actions carried out in the past.
Miller told NBC’s Meet the Press that the emphasis is on deporting those he calls “criminal aliens” and who “pose a threat to public safety.”
Miller said “we’re going to focus on public safety and saving American lives and we will not apologize.”
