Lawyers make up front line of fight against Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’: what you need to know

At LCN we usually focus on UK legal matters, but the unprecedented events involving hundreds of US lawyers and several principled judges in the United States over the weekend are of such global importance to those who value the law and legal process that we wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t report them and compile some useful links for the aspiring legal practitioners who comprise our readers.

On the afternoon of Friday 27 January, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order (not a new law) suspending the entire admissions system for refugees trying to enter the United States for 120 days (and suspending the Syrian refugee programme indefinitely), ostensibly to combat what Trump has called “Islamic [note, not “Islamist”] terrorism”. Trump’s order also banned entry into the United States for those travelling from seven majority-Muslim countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen – for 90 days, which has had the effect of barring US residents, university students and green-card holders, as well as all dual nationals, from re-entering the country. The order even prevented a British MP, Iraqi-born Nadhim Zahawi, from entering the United States to visit his children.

The ensuing chaos at US airports, where approved refugees, valid visa holders, non-US dual citizens and US legal residents are being detained, barred from aeroplanes or forcibly put on flights leaving the United States, has been reflected at executive level by the White House’s apparent failure to consult with the federal agencies tasked with carrying out the order, and at diplomatic level by confusion about how the ban will impact on citizens of countries allied to the United States.

Chillingly – and crucially for those who care about the law and democracy – the rule of law and respect for democratic process have been badly undermined as events have unfolded. The executive order has been accurately described as unconstitutional by hundreds of US politicians and lawyers (the US Constitution forbids discrimination on the grounds of religion and places limitations on executive power), and late on Saturday several federal judges in Virginia, Massachusetts and New York ordered a temporary halt in deportations of people who had arrived in the country with valid visas. However, it soon emerged that rogue customs and US Border Patrol agents were ignoring these court orders, with reports of attempts to forcibly confiscate valid green cards and deport US residents continuing.

In the hours after the executive order and judicial response, lawyers and members of the House of Representatives (as well as thousands of protestors) have descended on US airports to ask customs officials and agencies to comply with the court order. Hundreds more lawyers – many holding signs in Arabic and Farsi – have arrived to help distressed relatives find and try to reunite with their loved ones. As we speak, colleagues in the US legal profession are directly involved in the fight to preserve hard-won rights and protect the US democratic system. It is the responsibility of future lawyers in the United Kingdom to be aware of the developing situation in the United States, not least because the actions of Britain’s closest and most powerful ally always have direct repercussions for rest of the ‘free world’ – of which the UK justice system, for now at least, remains an important part.