President Donald Trump’s blanket ban on Muslims traveling from seven countries in the Middle East to the United States has triggered a furious backlash nationally. In Massachusetts and Rhode Island over the weekend there were large peaceful demonstrations in Copley Square, at state houses and at airports protesting the executive order, and for those individuals affected by the edict arriving to the United States or afraid to leave it for any reason, their fates were in the hands of volunteer lawyers. It was those lawyers who helped turned the tide over the weekend.
This crisis began on Friday in Washington. With great fanfare — and controversial white nationalist aide, Steve Bannon, hovering by his side — Donald Trump announced his executive order.
“We don’t want them here,” he said. “We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threat our soldiers are fighting overseas.”
Threats posed — by implication — by people like Mazdak Tookadoni, an engineering professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, whom I spoke with after he had undergone a three-hour grilling by Customs and Border agents at Logan. He had decided to fly Saturday regardless of the ban. Tookadoni is originally from Iran and is Muslim.
“I was confused, but I’m an optimistic person, so I didn’t feel like anything was going to happen and so I told myself, let’s just go," he said.
He tried talking above the chanting at Logan. Tookadoni had just returned from an academic symposium in Paris and was heading home to Boston. He and seven other individuals were detained by Customs and Border agents upon landing at Logan for up to three hours.
“Apparently, there’s something new going on and I’m still confused,” he said.
Tookadoni — a green card holder — was eventually allowed to proceed into the night at Logan after a New York federal judge issued a broad ruling ordering federal officials not to deport permanent residents or individuals with valid visas. The others detained at Logan also were eventually allowed to pass through immigration control.
They were greeted by a thousand demonstrators. Some carried signs reading “welcome.”
Trump’s executive order was met by an army of volunteer lawyers who descended on airports across the country. Many came at the request of the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the executive order on constitutional grounds. Massachusetts-ACLU legal director Matt Segal was asked if he was surprised by Trump following through on his campaign promise targeting certain Muslims.
“No," he said. "The only thing surprising is that anyone would issue an order this unconstitutional and unlawful in the first place. It doesn’t pass the laugh test and I think courts are going to see that."
Immigration lawyer Kelly Doyle said the President’s “sloppily written order” was perplexing.
“The President issues an executive order and seems to have done so without speaking to his attorneys, without speaking to the department of justice, and without a forethought to the actual rule of law in our country."
Susan Church, President of the American Immigration Lawyers Association of New England, or AILA, said she had a hard time believing that one provision had been nuzzled into Trump’s hard-edged edict.
“What was particularly shocking about this order is that no one even knew when it first came out that it applied to lawful permanent residents. And these are lawful residents who’ve been to two, three, sometimes four interviews before granted their green cards and security checks that most other applicants for lawful permanent residency have not undergone. It wasn’t until the national Customs and Border Protection community liaison made a statement that ‘oh, yeah, it applies to lawful permanent residents.’ That suddenly lawful permanent residents were ensconced in this. It’s not even clearly written into the order.”
Some Republicans also criticized the inclusion of green card holders in the seven-nation ban, and on Sunday’s Meet The Press, Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, made what seemed to be an about face.
“As far as green card holders moving forward, it doesn’t affect them," he said.
But immigration lawyers were taking no chances with this administration. Before Priebus’ seeming reversal — 10 attorneys representing prominent firms in Boston, the AILA, and the ACLU rushed to the Moakley federal courthouse Saturday night. They piled in to argue for a temporary restraining order to stay Trump’s executive decision as it applied locally. The arguments went into the early morning. Federal prosecutor Ray Farquhar represented the government. The lawyers asked the court to order Homeland Security to allow immigrants with valid visas to board their flights to the U.S. and to be allowed to enter and pass through like other passengers.
At 1:55 a.m. Sunday, Judge Allison Burroughs and Magistrate Judith Dein issued a temporary restraining order against President Trump’s blanket ban on Muslims from the seven countries — Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Libya and Yemen. Conspicuously — the ACLU pointed out — none of the countries where most the 9/11 terrorists originated, chiefly Saudi Arabia, were on the list. They also noted that Donald Trump has business investments in Saudi Arabia and other Middle-East nations absent from the executive order.
Susan Church says the band of pro-bono immigrant lawyers got just about everything they wanted.
“We received a restraining order that is local to Massachusetts but significantly wider than the national restraining order," she said. "It has prohibited Customs and Border’s Protection from violating the secondary inspection rule against people who are coming in using the executive order to interrogate them unnecessarily. It requires Customs and Border Protection to notify the airlines that the executive order is stayed in Massachusetts and that they should not be turning away lawful permanent residents and lawful visa holders from entrance into the United States. So, it’s a great victory for today.”
Over the next week, Boston-area lawyers will be looking to go beyond the category of green card holders and attack the constitutionality of the order itself with the goal of winning a permanent ruling that blocks Trump’s order nationwide. Meanwhile, civil rights lawyers nationwide are suggesting that clients with green cards from any of the seven targeted countries should travel through Boston’s Logan airport. The word on the street is that the federal court here offers more legal protection than anywhere else — at least for the next few days before the temporary restraining order runs out.
