Court Ruling Against Trump’s Executive Order Shows the Worst of Judicial Activism

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has repeated the mistakes made by the district court judge who stayed President Donald Trump’s executive order temporarily suspending visas from seven terrorist havens.

Both the judge in Washington state and the San Francisco-based circuit court have now refused to recognize the authority of Congress and the president to make this national security decision.

Neither the judge in Washington state nor the court has offered anything approaching a detailed discussion of 8 U.SC. §1182 (f), the law which specifically gives the president authority to suspend the entry of any aliens into the U.S. if he believes their entry would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

Unless this statutory provision is unconstitutional, the president has acted completely within the law.

The 9th Circuit gives lip service to the fact that “courts owe substantial deference to the immigration and national security policy determinations of the political branches—an uncontroversial principle that is well-grounded in our jurisprudence.”

Inexplicably, it then proceeds to give no deference to the president’s policy determination that a temporary suspension is necessary to ensure that adequate vetting procedures are in place.

The court also gives no deference to the decision of Congress to delegate its plenary power over immigration to the president on this issue.

The 9th Circuit also claims that there is “no evidence that any alien from any of the countries named in the Order has perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States.”

But as Washington Examiner journalist Byron York reports, that’s simply not true. In fact, there is plenty of this sort of evidence:

Last year, the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on immigration and the national interest released information showing that at least 60 people born in the seven countries had been convicted—not just arrested, but convicted—of terror-related offenses in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.

And that number did not include more recent cases like Abdul Artan, a Somali refugee who wounded 11 people during a machete attack on the campus of Ohio State University last November.

Instead of discussing the relevant statute under which the president acted, the 9th Circuit instead engages in an extensive discussion of its concern that the executive branch is failing to provide due process to aliens barred from entry into the United States.

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