Hawaii judge halts Trump's new travel ban

REBUKE

Hawaii and other opponents of the ban claimed that the motivation behind it was Trump's campaign promise of "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."

Trump later toned down that language and said he would implement a policy of "extreme vetting" of foreigners coming to the United States.

Watson's order is only temporary until the broader arguments in the case can be heard. He set an expedited hearing to determine if his ruling should be extended.

Trump's first travel order was more sweeping than the second revised order. Like the current one, it barred citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from entering the country for 90 days, but it also included Iraq, which was taken off the list of banned countries in the subsequent order.

Refugees were blocked from entering the country for 120 days in both orders, but an indefinite ban on all refugees from Syria was dropped in the new one.

The revised ban also excluded legal permanent residents and existing visa holders. It provided a series of waivers for various categories of immigrants with ties to the United States.

The government has maintained in court that the changes resolve any legal issues with the original order and maintained that it was not discriminatory.

The government, in its court filings cautioned the court against looking for secret motives in the executive order and against performing "judicial psychoanalysis of a drafter's heart of heart."

Watson said he did not need to do that, because evidence of motive could be found in the president's public statements. He said he did not give credence to the government's argument that the order was not anti-Muslim because it targeted only a smallpercentage of Muslim-majority countries.

"The notion that one can demonstrate animus toward any group of people only by targeting all of them at once is fundamentally flawed," the judge wrote.

Reuters