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Trump Administration Faces EO Setbacks in Four Courts – Quinta Jurecic – Lawfare

https://web.archive.org/web/20170518071548/https://lawfareblog.com/trump-administration-faces-eo-setbacks-four-courts

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York has granted an emergency motion to stay the removal of immigrants and refugees detained and prevented from entering the United States as a result of President Trump’s executive order.

The suit was filed yesterday on behalf of two Iraqi refugees granted visas to the enter the United States but who were detained at JFK International Airport. The original habeas petition challenges the executive order as a violation of Hameed Khalid Darweesh and Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi’s rights under the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses, while the petitioners also sought a class certification to represent all refugees and immigrants “legally authorized to enter the United States, but who have been or will be denied entry.” (Darweesh was allowed entry into the United States earlier today, after the initial habeas petition had been filed.) Petitioners later filed an emergency motion for a stay of removal to prevent Alshawi and other members of the class from deportation.

The order, handed down by Judge Ann Donnelly, rules that:

The petitioners have a strong likelihood of success in establishing that the removal of the petitioner and others similarly situated violates their rights to Due Process and Equal Protection guaranteed by the United States Constitution. . . .

There is imminent danger that, absent the stay of removal, there will be substantial and irreparable injury to refugees, visa-holders, and other individuals from nations subject to the . . . Executive Order.

On those grounds, the court finds the government to be:

ENJOINED AND RESTRAINED from, in any manner and by any means, removing individuals with refugee applications approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services as part of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, holders of valid immigrant and non-immigrant visas, and other individuals from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen legally authorized to enter the United States.

hile the order prevents removal from the United States, it is not clear whether it requires the plaintiffs to be allowed entry. It is also unclear whether the stay will apply going forward to individuals who fall under the ban imposed by the Executive Order but who are otherwise “legally authorized to enter the United States”—that is, whether the stay prevents only the removal of those individuals currently detained in airports as a result of the order or whether it will continue to prevent removal of any similarly situated individual who arrives in a U.S. airport in the near future.

The court also ordered the government to provide a full list of individuals detained as a result of the Executive Order. Further proceedings are set for February.

Meanwhile, Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia issued a temporary restraining order requiring the government to permit green card holders detained in Dulles International Airport access to counsel and forbidding the detainees from being removed from the United States for seven days. 

The EDNY’s order to stay, the emergency motion, and the memorandum in support of the motion are available below, along with the EDVA application for a temporary restraining order and the order itself.

UPDATE: There appears to have been another stay:

Seattle District Court Judge grants Emergency Stay on Motion of Removal. Great work by @ACLU-WA and @NWIRP.

— Governor Jay Inslee (@GovInslee) January 29, 2017

The order, granted in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, grants a stay of removal for two unnamed plaintiffs. It is included below.

UPDATE II: Early on Sunday morning, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts granted a temporary restraining order halting the removal of immigrants and refugees. Notably, the order also bars the government from detaining those individuals affected. It also limits secondary screening to the extent permitted prior to the Executive Order and requires Customs and Border Patrol to notify airlines that individuals affected by the Order arriving at Logan Airport will be allowed entry in the United States.

Additionally, the State of California filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California claiming that the Executive Order represents an unconstitutional infringement of separation of powers and of the Establishment Clause and requesting immediate injunctive relief. The Massachusetts order and the State of California’s complaint are included below.

UPDATE III: The State of Washington appears to also be filing suit in response to the order:

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Wycliffe Bible Translators Commence Work – Quebec Diocese Gazette, Oct 1988, by Lynn Ross

This is a black-and-white photo of a family of four. The father, on the left, has a beard and glasses and wears a light-colored sweater. The mother stands next to him in a dark jacket and white shirt, holding a young child in a winter coat on her hip. In front of the mother is a young boy, Benjamin Jancewicz, smiling slightly and wearing a vest over a long-sleeve shirt. The family stands close together, appearing outdoors near a wooden structure or wall.
This is a black-and-white photo of a family of four. The father, on the left, has a beard and glasses and wears a light-colored sweater. The mother stands next to him in a dark jacket and white shirt, holding a young child in a winter coat on her hip. In front of the mother is a young boy, Benjamin Jancewicz, smiling slightly and wearing a vest over a long-sleeve shirt. The family stands close together, appearing outdoors near a wooden structure or wall.
The Jancewicz family, Bill, his wife, Norma Jean, holding their daughter Elizabeth, and their son, Benjamin, at Kawawachikamach, near Schefferville, in Northern Quebec. Photo: Lynn Ross

Wycliffe Bible Translators, with over five thousand members, is one of the largest mission, non-denominational, Bible translating ministries in the world.

In June, Mr. Bill Jancewicz, his wife, Norma Jean, and son, Benjamin, aged five, arrived at Kawawachikamach, near Schefferville, as representatives of the Wycliffe Bible Translators, to work with the Naskapi people in translating the scriptures into the Naskapi language.

The work of this missionary society began over fifty years ago, founded by Mr. William Cameron Townshend who went to Guatemala to sell Spanish Bibles and discovered many could not speak Spanish.

In response to this challenge, he settled there and began to translate the scriptures into the language of the people. This work made him aware of other cultures which did not have the scriptures in their own language so he founded a school in Arkansas called “Camp Wycliffe” to begin training volunteer translators.

“Wycliffe” comes from John Wycliffe who was one of the first translators of the scriptures into the English language.

Mr. Jancewicz said that members of the Wycliffe Bible Translators believe that the Bible is “the Word of God and every man should have it in his own language.”

Translators volunteer and spend their first two years learning the language, then the actual translation of the Old Testament commences. At the end of two years, there is a re-evaluation and the decision is made to continue the work or to leave.

The presence of the Jancewicz family in Northern Quebec is already making an impression. Mr. Jancewicz who is a mechanical illustrator and a civil servant with the United States Federal Government but who has been led to commit his life to what he believes is eternal and God’s Word is something that is eternal.

Following training in theology and nine months of training in the French language they arrived at Kawawachikamach to continue work which had begun with the efforts of two individuals, Lana Martens and Carol Chase who came in 1979 to Matimekosh, the former Naskapi village.

Volunteers who commit themselves to translation work must arrange for their own remuneration. The Jancewicz family has their financial support from three churches and receive whatever amount is donated to Wycliffe Translators in their name.

This ministry is indeed an act of faith and commitment. For further information write Wycliffe Bible Translators, Huntington Beach, CA 92647, U.S.A.