ACLU Class Action Says Trump’s Immigration Ban Violates Due Process

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) along with several other activist groups have joined together and filed a proposed class action lawsuit challenging the provisions of President Trump’s immigration ban from seven predominately Muslim countries.

On Jan. 27, the Trump administration announced that it would temporarily suspend entry to refugees from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen due to terrorism concerns in an Executive Order entitled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.”

The order seeks “extreme vetting” procedures for those it did allow to enter the U.S and bars action on all pending immigration applications for individuals from the seven countries identified in the executive order for 90 days.

However, the ACLU says the Trump administration has failed to provide a complete list of individuals who have been detained or deported, despite a federal judge’s order to turn over that information and stop deportations.

Lee Gelernt of the ACLU, Karen C. Tumlin of the National Immigration Law Center, and others filed the 20-page complaint on behalf of plaintiffs Hameed Khalid Darweesh and Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, two men from Iraq who have valid visas to enter the United States.

Reportedly, both plaintiffs were detained and threatened with deportation shortly after arriving at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport hours after Trump imposed the ban.

Darweesh worked as an interpreter, engineer and contractor for the U.S. government in Iraq from about 2003 to 2013, according to the complaint filed in New York federal court. His life was in danger in Iraq because of his ties to the U.S., the ACLU claims.

Alshawi had been granted a Follow to Join Visa and was traveling to Houston to join his wife and child, who are both permanent legal residents of the U.S.

The activists asked U.S. District Judge Carol Bagley Amon to order the government to provide a complete, updated list. But Judge Amon instructed the plaintiffs to work with the government in trying to resolve the matter before the courts become more involved, following President Trump’s attorney Samuel P. Go statement that he understood U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly’s order to apply only to individuals who had been in custody as of January 28.

“We have evidence that people have been detained,” Gelernt told reporters. “Judge Donnelly didn’t want that.”

In addition to Darweesh and Alshawi, the immigration ban is being applied to immigrants already lawfully residing within the U.S. who have pending applications for asylum, lawful permanent residence, and other immigration benefits, affecting tens of thousands of immigrants residing legally in the U.S.

“Respondents’ actions in detaining and mistreating Petitioners and other members of the proposed class…were arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law; contrary to constitutional right, power, privilege, or immunity,” the lawsuit states.

How many people have been treated that way isn’t known, nor is the number of people being detained in U.S. airports, Tumlin argued. “The information keeps changing,” Tumlin said. “The information keeps shifting under our feet.”

The lawsuit claims that the executive order is unlawful and violates the plaintiffs’ Fifth Amendment due process rights and asks for a writ of habeas corpus in regards to the “unlawful detention” as well as for declaratory and injunctive relief.

The plaintiffs are represented by Lee Gelernt of the ACLU, Karen C. Tumlin of the National Immigration Law Center and Michael J. Wishnie of Yale Law School among others.

The President Trump Executive Order Immigration Ban Class Action Lawsuit is Darweesh, et al v. Trump, et al., Case No. 1:17-cv-00480, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

UPDATE: On Aug. 31 2017, a new settlement over the Trump administration’s first immigration ban will provide barred travelers with notice of their right to reapply for entry into the U.S.