Detroit Area Families ‘In Limbo’ After Travel Ban: Federal Lawsuit

DETROIT, MI — The Arab American Civil Rights League is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court in Detroit on behalf of five local families who are unable to return to the United States under President Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban. The lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of the ban, which limits the ability of refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries to travel back to the United States and their relatives.

The families represented in the lawsuit are all legal, permanent residents of the United States, according to the ACRL, which held a news conference Tuesday afternoon on the steps of the U.S. District Courthouse in Detroit. The Detroit area, and Dearborn in particular, has one of the highest concentrations of Arab-Americans in the nation.

“As lawful permanent residents of the United States, plaintiffs are attempting to come to the United States to be with their family,” the lawsuit states. “They have been left in limbo while being denied the ability to travel to the United States for no reason other than the discriminatory and unconstitutional (executive order).”

Named as defendants in the lawsuit are Trump, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and its secretary, John Kelly; and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and its acting commissioner, Kevin K. McAleenan.

The lawsuit is the latest in a mounting number of legal challenges to the travel ban. Trump has maintained the ban isn’t an attack on religion, but an important national security precaution to protect the country against radical Islamic terrorists. Those lawsuits primarily concern individuals who are in custody or were detained while traveling to the United States.

The ACRL lawsuit states that “although temporary injunctions were entered in various district courts around the United States, plaintiffs file this present suit due to fact that the existing orders do not encompass green card holders that were not in route or detained by the United States.”

“This complaint addresses green card holders that are attempting to fly back to the United States, or are attempting to fly to the United States, that have either been denied flight or a threat of being denied flight due to the executive order,” according to the lawsuit.

At the news conference, the lead attorney in the case, Nabih Ayad, said that “Donald Trump does not trump the Constitution,” the Detroit Free Press reported.

“What Donald Trump has shown us today — in the last week — is he’s going to take action on the rhetoric that he has addressed,” Ayad said. “And we will not stand for it. We are going to continue to resist — to resist, resist, resist.”

Ayad said the plaintiffs are but a handful of those affected by the travel ban, The Detroit News reported. Nationally, as many as 100,000 green card holders could be affected, he said.

“There is a whole greater number affected by this that are trying to come back and a chilling effect to those who don’t know if they can travel,” he said.

Plaintiffs include:

• Samir Almasmari, who had traveled to Yemen, was on his way back when he was stopped from boarding a flight in Egypt. A citizen of Yemen, he has been a permanent resident of the United States since March 2015. He lives in Wayne County.
• Abubaker Abbass, an American citizen, is trapped in Yemen with his 9-year-old son, whom he was visiting. The son was denied a visa to join his family.
• Walid Jammoul, a citizen of Syria, was issued a visa earlier this month to enter the the United States as a permanent resident so he could join his wife, an American.
• Sabah Almasmary, a permanent resident of the United States since 2004, who is married to an American citizen, is trapped in Yemen. The couple have seven children, all of whom are U.S. citizens. Almasmary traveled to her native Yemen to visit her family and was denied re-entry.
• Hana Almashmari is a citizen of Yemen and a permanent resident of the United States. Her husband is an American citizen.

The lawsuit references comments by Trump to Christian Broadcasting Network that persecuted Christians would be given priority refugee status.

“If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible and the reason that was so unfair — everybody was persecuted, in all fairness — but they were chopping off the heads of everybody but more so the Christians,” the president said in the interview. “And I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them.”

In the lawsuit, the ACRL says Trump’s executive order “exhibits hostility to a specific faith, Islam, and gives preference to other religious faith, principally Christianity.”

“Defendants have demonstrated an intent to discriminate against plaintiffs on the basis of religion through repeated public statements that make clear that the (executive order) was designed to prohibit the entry of Muslims to the United States,” the lawsuit states.

Read the lawsuit below.

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