Maryland Judge Restricts Trump's Travel Ban

GREENBELT, MD — A federal judge in Maryland has ruled that part of President Donald Trump's revised travel ban should not be enforced.

U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang reportedly handed down the opinion Thursday morning saying that the executive order from the president was intended specifically to ban Muslims from entering the country.

Chuang ruled to bar enforcement of the part of Trump's order that would have prevented people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from obtaining visas for 90 days, citing the president's words that indicated his intent was to ban Muslims from the U.S., according to The Washington Post.

An attorney for the ACLU testified in Maryland court Wednesday on behalf of those opposing the ban, stating the executive order was unconstitutional as well as "disgraceful and discriminatory," CNN reported.

Chuang gave his ruling Thursday morning after another federal judge had blocked the travel ban altogether. Read the order and opinion from the Maryland judge.

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson of Hawaii issued a restraining order at 6 p.m. EST prohibiting enforcement of the executive order in its entirety. Trump's ban would have otherwise become federal policy at one minute after midnight.

"Irreparable injury is likely if the requested relief is not issued," Watson ruled Wednesday.

Trump's executive order would have barred citizens from six Muslim-majority countries — Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Syria, Somalia and Libya — from entering the U.S. for 90 days, unless they could present a valid visa or green card issued before the ban. (Iraq was listed in Trump's previous draft, but was pulled from this one.)

"These six countries have overwhelmingly Muslim populations that range from 90.7 percent to 99.8 percent," Watson wrote. "It would therefore be no paradigmatic leap to conclude that targeting these countries likewise targets Islam."

Watson found the order violated the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens to associate with people of certain religions, after hearing the case waged by a Hawaii man whose mother-in-law was unable to visit from Syria. Watson said the executive order has "injured [the state's] institutions, economy and sovereign interest in maintaining the separation between church and state."

After Trump's first ban, issued in late January, was deemed unconstitutional by multiple federal judges, he went back to the drawing board. His second ban, signed March 6, has the same title as the first: "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States."

Rulings from judges will not stop him from persisting, Trump said.

"We're going to fight this terrible ruling," Trump said during a rally in Nashville after the Honolulu decision came down Wednesday. "We're going to take our case as far as it needs to go, including all the way up to the Supreme Court. We're going to win. We're going to keep our citizens safe."

Patch editor Simone Wilson contributed to this article.

Related: U.S. Judge Blocks 'Muslim Ban 2.0;' Trump Calls It 'Unprecedented Judicial Overreach

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