The Republican-led Congress has largely stood aside as the Trump Administration moves to enforce a refugee ban and travel restrictions aimed at 7 predominantly Muslim nations — Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. That's left many of those affected by Trump's order to turn to the judiciary in the hope that the courts will provide checks and balances on executive power. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is the lead legal organization representing those who are being literally locked out of the United States.
The telephones have been ringing a lot at the Boston office of the ACLU of Massachusetts.
“Yeah, we’re getting calls from people around the world who are stranded and are trying to get home, and how to get to Logan,” said Matthew Segal, state legal director for the ACLU.
“The calls have been going on for days. Even before we had filed a lawsuit we let people know that if they’re being detained they can contact us. But of course, anyone who wanted to contact us wasn’t being limited to people who were being detained at Logan. Just a tremendous volume of calls from people who are trying to get on flights to Logan or to other airports. We’ve just had a steady stream of calls and calls and calls.”
ACLU and immigration lawyers have been back and forth to Logan airport the last few days offering their services pro-bono to passengers caught up by Customs and Border officials trying to enforce an order that has been widely criticized as confusing and poorly executed.
Even green card holders – including area students – despite the Boston federal court order are being subjected to extensive inspections and interrogation. But at Logan, most are getting through.
People are looking to Massachusetts and to Logan Airport as the place that might have in their view the greatest possible legal protection when they come back, but for those coming from the named seven countries without a green card – both immigrant and non-immigrant visa holders — it continues to be much harder to enter the country. Boston immigration attorney Susan Church says that quite a few have been sent back or refused boarding.
Segal says even though the ACLU and its allies won a legal victory over the weekend with a temporary stay on Trump's order, they now face a major hurdle: Turning that temporary stay into a permanent injunction. The stay expires by week’s end and the ACLU, now joined by Oxfam America and state Attorney General Maura Healey, among others, will be in court Friday morning to try and make that happen.
“We have this extraordinary group prepared to fight this battle and I know that we all have in mind the purpose of ensuring continuity of relief," Segal said. "This order that’s now in place that’s protecting people from President Trump’s Executive Order, we want to make sure that it isn’t lifted.”
The hearing will take place at the Moakley U.S. Federal Courthouse in South Boston. Nathaniel Gorton, a former intelligence surveillance court judge, will preside.
WGBH News has learned that some prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston are uneasy defending Trump’s directive and that the Department of Justice is flying in prosecutors from Washington, D.C. to defend the executive order, but acting U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, William Weinreb, downplays the significance of that.
“It’s not that cases are being taken away from us.," Weinreb said. "This is traditionally how these kinds of cases have always been handled with the specialists from DOJ in their specialty areas coming in to take the lead and attorneys here assisting them in court.”
Inside the Moakley Courthouse there is considerable consternation with how Trump fired his acting Attorney General Sally Yates for refusing to uphold his order, which the president characterized as a “betrayal”. Weinreb — a career prosecutor — would not take a position on the controversy.
“I have no inside information as to what happened up in the upper reaches of DOJ, and I’m not really in a position to talk about Sally Yates," he said. "My job is to focus on the work that I’m doing here and not, you know, get distracted by things that are happening back in D.C.”
But Segal of the state ACLU — who applauded Yates’s gesture — certainly has a position.
“Responsible, ethical government attorneys are going to have lines that they will not cross, and they should not cross," he said, and he believes that the law is on their side.
“The ACLU and other civil rights advocates have long said that if President Trump tries to follow through on his plans, which he is now doing, we will see him in court. And we know that we have to win. And we intend to win.”
Many others seem to agree. Since the President's order was handed down, the national ACLU has seen a surge in donations — more than 25 million dollars in a matter of days. At the ACLU headquarters in Boston, the calls are still coming in.
Reporter Joshua Eaton contributed to this feature.
