You cannot stop Muslims from entering America, Court tells Trump as he suffers humiliating defeat again
President Donald Trump has suffered another humiliating defeat again as a U.S. federal judge in Hawaii on Wednesday issued an emergency halt to the order's implementation of his revised travel ban which was expected to take effect hours later.
The judge who blocked Donald Trump's revised executive order barring travel from six predominantly Muslim nations has said it "targets Islam"
Consequently, the court verdict was the latest legal blow to Trump’s efforts to temporarily ban refugees as well as travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries, which the he said is needed for national security
The president signed the new ban on March 6 in a bid to overcome legal problems with a January executive order that caused chaos at airports and sparked mass protests before a Washington judge stopped its enforcement in February.
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According to Reuters, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson put an emergency stop to the new order in response to a lawsuit filed by the state of Hawaii, which argued that the order discriminated against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The judge wrote: “A reasonable, objective observer... would conclude that the Executive Order was issued with a purpose to disfavour a particular religion, in spite of its stated, religiously-neutral purpose."
He added: “It is undisputed, using the primary source upon which the Government itself relies, that these six countries have overwhelmingly Muslim populations that range from 90.7 percent to 99.8 percent."
"It would therefore be no paradigmatic leap to conclude that targeting these countries likewise targets Islam. Certainly, it would be inappropriate to conclude, as the Government does, that it does not."
Trump who denied the orders are a "Muslim ban" says his plans was an “extreme vetting.”
“It’s not the Muslim ban," he told ABC News. "But it’s countries that have tremendous terror… countries that people are going to come in and cause us tremendous problems.”
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However, the Trump administration has also said the ban is not religiously motivated because the six countries only represent a small fraction – around nine per cent – of the world’s Muslim population.
Meanwhile, Trump called the judge's block "unprecedented judicial overreach" and said he will take the case "as far as it needs to go," including to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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