6 days ago
Trump's new ban dodges pitfalls faced by last attempt, experts say
US President Donald Trump has issued a sweeping new travel ban for people from 12 countries, revisiting a hallmark policy of his first term in are some key differences, original travel ban suffered a series of legal defeats. This time, the policy appears to have been designed to avoid the same predecessor, which targeted seven predominantly Muslim countries and was dubbed the "Muslim ban" by critics, was ordered just a week after Trump took office in 2017, during his first term in the White ban was amended twice to overcome court challenges, after opponents argued it was unconstitutional and illegal because it discriminated against travellers based on their religion.A scaled-back version was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018, which this new ban closely experts told the BBC that it appeared Trump had learned lessons from his first Jackson, an expert in US immigration law at the London firm Laura Devine Immigration, said the new ban was more legally robust as a the first lacked "clarity", the new restrictions were "wider in scope" and had "clearly defined" exemptions, she there are some similarities in the nations chosen by the 2017 ban and the 2025 ban, Muslim-majority states are not the express target of the latest McQuade, professor of law at the University of Michigan and former US attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, told the BBC World Service's Newshour programme that, on this basis, it seemed likely to win the approval of the Supreme Court, if it was ever referred up to that level.
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The 12 countries subject to the harshest restrictions from 9 June are mainly in the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean, including Afghanistan, Iran and will be partial restrictions on travellers from another seven countries, including Cuban and Venezuelan said the strength of the restrictions would be graded against the severity of the perceived threat, including from besides Iran, none of the 12 countries hit by the outright ban are named on the US government's state sponsors of terrorism a video announcing the ban posted on X, Trump cited Sunday's incident in Boulder, Colorado, in which a man was accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at demonstrators attending a march for Israeli alleged attacker was an Egyptian national. However, Egypt does not appear on either list.
Trump also specified high rates of people overstaying their visas as a reason for listing certain Steven D Heller, an immigration lawyer based in the US, said there was a "lack of clarity" over what threshold had to be met by a country's overstaying rate in order for that country to be placed on Trump's ban list. That could be the basis for a successful legal challenge, he suggested."If they're relying on this notion of excessive overstay rates... they have to define what that actually means," he told the the first ban, which was to last for only 90 to 120 days, today's order has no end has been met with dismay in the targeted countries. Venezuela has described the Trump administration as "supremacists who think they own the world", though Somalia has pledged to "engage in dialogue to address the concerns raised".The original ban spurred mass protests and sowed chaos at US airports. It was repealed in 2021 by Trump's successor, President Joe Biden, who called the policy "a stain on our national conscience."
