The state of Hawaii is suing President Donald Trump over his executive order temporarily banning immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries and suspending the admission of all refugees to the United States, arguing in a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court that the restrictions are unconstitutional and contrary to American values.
“We did so for one simple reason: Everyone in the United States, including the president, must follow the law and follow the Constitution,” said state Attorney General Doug Chin during a news conference announcing the suit. “The executive order that President Trump issued last Friday keeps Hawaii families apart; it blocks Hawaii residents from traveling; it harms Hawaii’s tourism industry; it establishes a religion in Hawaii in violation of the Constitution; it blocks Hawaii businesses and universities from hiring as they see fit.”
He continued, “Most importantly, it degrades the values Hawaii has worked so hard to protect by subjecting a specific set of its residents to discrimination and second-class treatment. We cannot allow this to happen.”
Washington and Minnesota have also filed lawsuits over the executive order, while a number of other states have joined in a suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Hours after Hawaii’s lawsuit was filed, a U.S. judge in Seattle temporarily blocked Trump’s immigration restrictions nationwide.
U.S. District Judge James Robart ruled against government lawyers who claimed that states lack the standing to challenge the president’s executive order and said that the lawsuits were likely to prevail, according to the Washington Post.
Hawaii Republican Party Chairman Fritz Rohlfing said he thought the Hawaii lawsuit was “overkill and unnecessary” and that the seven countries named in the order were either “terrorist-controlled or -ridden.”
He predicted Hawaii would lose the suit and that “we will have spent resources pursuing something that I don’t think will be of much benefit to Hawaii citizens.”
Trump’s Jan. 27 order banned immigration for 90 days from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Sudan. The admission of Syrian refugees was indefinitely suspended, while the admission of all other refugees was suspended for 120 days.
The ban caused chaos at airports throughout the nation. More than 100 people entering the country legally were reportedly detained, sparking protests outside major airports, including in Honolulu. Immigration attorneys and government officials are still trying to sort out all the ramifications of the order, as well as the implications of the restraining order issued Friday.
It’s estimated that between 60,000 and 100,000 visas have been revoked as part of the directive.
Chin said that Trump’s executive order uniquely harms Hawaii, the most ethnically diverse state in the nation, where close to one-fifth of the state’s residents are foreign-born.
In addition to separating Hawaii residents from relatives in the affected countries, the lawsuit says the order risks dampening tourism, the state’s major economic driver, and is an affront to both national and Hawaii values.
“For many in Hawaii, including state officials, the executive order conjures up the memory of the Chinese Exclusion Acts and the imposition of martial law and Japanese internment after the bombing of Pearl Harbor,” the complaint said.
The lawsuit claims Trump’s order is unconstitutional because it favors one religion over another, denies equal protection under the law on the basis of national origin, curtails the right to travel without any legal justification, deprives individuals of due process and violates the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Administrative Procedures Act.
The complaint lays out a number of promises that Trump made on the campaign trail to restrict or block Muslim immigrants and refugees from entering the United States. Trump later in the campaign referred to his positions as “extreme vetting” rather than a “Muslim ban.”
Officials with U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not respond to questions about what effect Trump’s order is having in Hawaii. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the border agency, is also named in the lawsuit.
Trump’s order argues that the restrictions are meant to protect Americans from potential terrorists entering the country.
However, multiple media outlets, as well as Hawaii’s lawsuit, have pointed to a dearth of cases in which nationals from the seven named countries have attacked the U.S.
Trump has defended his order in numerous tweets and interviews, saying it is about “making America safe again.”
“Everybody is arguing whether or not it is a BAN,” he tweeted Wednesday. “Call it what you want, it is about keeping bad people (with bad intentions) out of the country!”
Hakim Ouansafi, president of the Muslim Association of Hawaii, said Trump’s executive order was spreading fear among Muslims in Hawaii, including students here on visas.
“The fear is very real. They are afraid that if they say anything publicly, the government will know who they are, and they will round them up,” he said.
Ouansafi called the order “mean-spirited, un-American and unconstitutional.”
“We commend the governor and the attorney general for their courage and their leadership to take this moral stand,” he said.