LOS ANGELES (CNS) — Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer has announced that his office is aligning with other cities and states opposed to President Donald Trump’s updated travel ban.
The city filed an amicus brief in support of Washington state’s lawsuit to have the revised ban halted, joining New York, Chicago and other jurisdictions.
“All the window dressing in the world won’t magically transform a travel ban that’s unconstitutional at its core into a lawful order,” Feuer said Tuesday, March 14.
“Los Angeles proudly stands with cities across the nation at this perilous time, when many of our nation’s most fundamental principles hang in the balance.”
The lawsuit seeks to stop Trump’s revised executive order, which temporarily bars the issuance of new visas to citizens of six Muslim-majority countries and suspends the U.S. refugee program.
Trump issued an earlier travel ban in January that included Iraq along with the six other countries, but the ban also blocked entry to those with valid visas. It was blocked by a federal judge in February and the ruling was upheld by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland are scheduled to hear arguments on March 22 on whether to halt the revised order, and the same federal judge in Seattle who halted Trump’s original ban was scheduled to review legal briefs in the Washington state lawsuit, The Washington Post reported.
“The travel ban targets people indiscriminately and is far out of step with the values of religious tolerance and equality that we believe in as Americans,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said.
“Cities are coming together to lead this fight because we understand the urgency of working together to keep our country safe — and doing it in a way that honors our shared humanity, celebrates our diversity, and does not turn away from the ideals that define who we are.”
Trump has argued that the ban is needed to protect the country from terrorism.
Hundreds of people or more were detained or deported from Los Angeles International Airport as a result of the original travel ban, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The ACLU said it was contacted by 329 people who were detained or said they had a relative who was detained, and some reported that Customs and Border Patrol agents deprived detainees of food and water, solicited bribes and confiscated their cellphones.
Feuer has also submitted a Freedom of Information Act Request to the federal government for detailed information on the people who were detained, and his office also joined an amicus brief in February opposing the original travel ban.