Wall Street Journal
By Joe Palazzolo
August 28, 2017
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Monday on whether President Donald Trump’s administration should be able to enforce its travel ban against extended family of U.S. residents.
The lower courts have been wrestling with the enforcement of the ban, which suspended the admission of refugees and blocked travel from six predominantly Muslim countries. The Supreme Court in June partially lifted orders blocking the policy but barred the Trump administration from applying the ban to foreigners who have a “close familial relationship” with a U.S. resident or “formal, documented” ties to a U.S. entity, such as a university.
The Ninth Circuit arguments were an offshoot of the Supreme Court’s review of the travel ban. The justices are scheduled to hear arguments in October in what could be the most closely watched case of the term. Monday’s hearing in the Ninth Circuit, sitting in Seattle, was meant to determine how to enforce the ban until then.
Lawyers for the Trump administration argued that a “close relative” should only include parents, children, siblings and in-laws.
Lawyers for Hawaii and an imam in the state, who are challenging the travel ban, argued for a broader definition that included cousins, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, grandparents and grandchildren. The three Ninth Circuit judges, all appointees of President Bill Clinton, seemed to prefer the more inclusive version.
“How can the government take the position that a grandmother or a grandfather or an aunt or an uncle of a child in the U.S. does not have a close familial relationship?” Judge Ronald Gould, asked the government lawyer, Hashim Mooppan.
Mr. Mooppan said the administration drew from federal immigration law, which defines “immediate relatives” as children, spouses and parents of U.S. citizens.
Colleen Sinzdak, a lawyer at Hogan Lovells US LLP who represents Hawaii, said her team grabbed its broader definition from past Supreme Court decisions.
“This isn’t language plucked out of nowhere,” she said, adding that in two cases the high court described close family relationships as including grandparents, nieces, nephews and cousins.
Judge Richard Paez wanted to know what was “significantly different between a grandparent and a mother-in-law?”
Mr. Mooppan explained that, in marriage, “your spouse’s family becomes your family”—one step removed from the “family unit,” unlike grandparents, who are two leaps away.
The other question the Ninth Circuit must decide is whether refugees’ ties to their resettlement agencies in the U.S. exempt them from the travel ban.
Resettlement agencies enter in agreements with the State Department to provide assistance to prospective refugees, an arrangement that lawyers for Hawaii said qualified as a “formal, documented” tie to a U.S. group.
“There is no relationship between the refugee and the resettlement agency that is created by the assurance,” Mr. Mooppan said in response.
He said about 900 refugees have been admitted based on relationships in the U.S. beyond connections to their resettlement agencies.
A ruling in the case could come in the next few weeks.
Write to Joe Palazzolo at joe.palazzolo@wsj.com
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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