Refugees from travel ban countries can enter U.S., Seattle judge rules

The Trump administration must allow refugees to enter the United States from countries covered by the president’s travel ban, a federal judge in Seattle ruled Monday.

U.S. District Court Judge Jamal Whitehead’s decision opens the door for around 80 refugees to immediately arrive from countries whose citizens are banned from traveling here. 

Affected individuals and resettlement organizations, including Lutheran Community Services Northwest in Tacoma, brought the lawsuit after President Donald Trump halted refugee admissions via executive order on his first day in office.

In February, Whitehead, a Biden appointee, ruled the president’s order likely “crossed the line” of separation of powers. 

But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later narrowed Whitehead’s ruling to only allow the entry of refugees whose applications were approved before Trump signed the executive order. For refugees to enter the country under the appeals court ruling, they also needed clearance from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and travel plans arranged at the time Trump issued his ban on refugee admissions. 

That decision from a three-judge 9th Circuit panel didn’t stop Trump from otherwise halting the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.

Whitehead ordered the federal government to facilitate entry for refugees who met the appeals court’s three-prong test and had travel scheduled within two weeks of Trump’s order. The federal government reported 160 people met those criteria. 

Magistrate Judge Michelle Peterson, of Seattle, will review the cases of others whose scheduled arrival date was after Feb. 3. This includes more than 4,000 cases comprising upward of 12,000 potential refugees.

The question before the district court was whether the Trump administration still needed to admit refugees from countries targeted in Trump’s early June travel ban.

One of the plaintiffs in the litigation is a Bellevue woman who filed an application to sponsor a refugee family from Afghanistan before the federal government suspended their case. Afghanistan is included in the president’s travel ban.

The organizations involved in the case also fear the Trump administration is undercounting the number of impacted refugees. They say the federal government isn’t including people whose travel plans were postponed for reasons other than the refugee ban, like application processing delays. And some plans may have been canceled in anticipation of the president’s actions.

The Trump administration countered in court documents that those refugees aren’t covered by the appeals court’s order. Department of Justice attorney Joseph McCarter called the request a “baseless and unrestrained expansion” of the ruling.

Whitehead ruled refugees whose travel plans were canceled between Dec. 1 and Jan. 20 are also covered by his order, paving a path for more to arrive in the U.S. 

Within a week from Monday, the federal government must identify all cases meeting the appellate court’s three-part test, Whitehead ordered.

The government must also expedite the entry of unaccompanied refugee children and Afghan refugees temporarily staying at a camp in Qatar.

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