Muslim Ban 3-Year Anniversary
By Marielena Hincapié, Executive Director, National Immigration Law Center
January 27, 2020
Three years ago today, the Trump administration shut the door on immigrants from several Muslim-majority countries, causing panic and fear for travelers and families around the world. Tens of thousands of people were stranded in airports across the United States.
One of them was Hameed Darweesh, who had been an interpreter for the U.S. military in Iraq. Though he had already been vetted and approved to leave that country with his family to safety in the U.S., they were left stranded. Instead of being welcomed at Kennedy International Airport, the family was split up. Mr. Darweesh was taken from his wife and children and threatened with being sent back to certain danger in Iraq.
Late that same night, we at the National Immigration Law Center decided to go to court to keep America’s doors open for Mr. Darweesh and people like him. Together with the International Refugee Assistance Project, Yale Law School’s Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic, and the ACLU, we filed Darweesh v. Trump on Saturday morning, on behalf of everyone similarly detained at airports across the country.
What happened next was one of the most inspiring displays of democracy in action: America’s better angels sprang into action. Volunteer lawyers, students, advocates, and many other normal citizens rushed to airports across the country, rallied outside of the U.S. district courthouse in Brooklyn (where we’d filed the lawsuit), and got the wheels of justice to turn faster than I’ve ever seen them move. That Saturday night, we achieved the first of many legal victories won by immigrants and refugees against shameful, xenophobic actions taken by the Trump administration.
That was three years ago. Today we face the painful reality that this administration has been able to inflict so much pain on Muslims — in particular, on people from the banned countries — and other immigrant communities impacted by its extremist anti-immigrant policies.
Today is also the eve of another important court day — tomorrow, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments in our ongoing challenge to the latest version of the Muslim ban, which the U.S. Supreme Court allowed to remain in effect last year. This ban continues to separate families, leaving U.S. citizens unable to be with their children, spouses and parents, and preventing many people from entering the U.S. for career and educational opportunities or for life-saving health care. Tomorrow’s hearing is in the case International Refugee Assistance Project, et al. v. Donald Trump, et al., Iranian Alliances Across Borders v. Trump, and Zakzok v. Trump.
Despite the Supreme Court’s terrible decision, which history will judge to be a stain on its legacy, the justices did not actually rule that the Muslim ban is constitutional or that it isn’t discriminatory. The court simply said that it would agree to give strong deference to the executive branch on a preliminary question in a case that is far from over.
That’s why we continue to challenge the ban — because we know that, with persistence, we will continue to successfully expose the anti-Muslim animus that is its driving force.
Our commitment to pressing on with these legal challenges is not just about eventually overturning the ban or establishing a historical record that reflects how we fought back. It’s about making sure we expose what the ban represents — that it is part of a larger agenda to change the composition of our country.
The Muslim ban, like so many other of this administration’s policies, is rooted in a desire to dehumanize and exclude communities of color. This bigotry takes many forms. It includes going after refugees — the majority of whom, in the years preceding the Trump administration, were from Muslim-majority countries — by closing our borders to asylum-seekers and letting them languish in conditions that often prove fatal. It includes imposing a racially motivated wealth test on immigrants through the so-called “public charge” rule. It includes caging brown children at our border and demonizing their parents to justify doing so. And it includes stripping Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) and temporary protected status (TPS) protections from longtime residents of the U.S. and creating endless bureaucratic barriers that make having access to a “fair day in court” an absolute fiction. In these ways and so many others, this administration has been ruthless in its commitment to redefining who is considered worthy of being an American and who belongs in our nation.
Now, with media reports that the administration is considering yet another ban — this time targeting people from up to seven more countries and specifically banning them from obtaining permanent residence and the chance to become U.S. citizens — we are once again seeing its true colors.
At their core, this administration’s efforts are aimed at changing the complexion of immigration and, in turn, the complexion of our country. Simply put, they are an attempt to make America whiter and richer. This is about denying human beings the freedom to be reunited with their loved ones and to eventually become citizens and ultimately voters. This is about disenfranchising communities of color and undermining our democracy.
Whether its target is Muslims, black or brown immigrants, or the poor, this administration’s mission is clear. Banning people from largely nonwhite countries and announcing a desire to do so on the anniversary of the first Muslim ban is not credible or defensible policy. It is a political stunt designed to show Trump’s base that he is still delivering on his promise to keep out nonwhite immigrants.
If we are serious about challenging Trump, we need to keep battling in court and appealing to Congress to repeal the Muslim ban and other xenophobic policies like it. We need to keep holding vigils and being visible at protests.
But we also need to make change happen at the polls. And we need to demand more from the Democrats running for president. More than simply rejecting Trump’s agenda, the candidates must commit to truly transforming our approach to how we talk about and include immigrants in conversations of critical national importance — from health care, to housing, education, and climate change. Our ability to thrive together depends not only on holding Trump accountable, but also on truly changing how we treat our most marginalized communities.
