It seems US President Donald
Trump has just got up from a deep slumber of three months to realize that the reworked
Travel Ban plan that bears his signature has been watered down to the extent that
it is worthless and its original and a much tougher version is needed to be
restored. Donald Trump had signed the "watered down" version on March
6. And like his earlier attempt to enforce a nation-wide travel ban plan
targeting a particular community, this, too, was stayed by the US courts.
After the London Bridge terror attack on June 3 that left seven dead and dozens injured, Trump has slammed the re-drafted version of own his administration's Travel Ban order an attempt to be "politically
correct", in a series of tweets, he has said that "the US Justice Department
should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down,
politically correct version they submitted to the US Supreme Court and the
Justice Department should ask for an expedited hearing of the watered down
Travel Ban before the Supreme Court - and seek much tougher version!"
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
The Justice Dept. should have
stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct
version they submitted to S.C.
3:59 PM - 5 Jun 2017
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/871675245043888128
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
The Justice Dept. should ask
for an expedited hearing of the watered down Travel Ban before the Supreme
Court - & seek much tougher version!
4:07 PM - 5 Jun 2017
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/871677472202477568
It raises a pertinent
question then - why Donald Trump allowed this watered down version to go through?
Did he not study it before putting his signature or was he convinced that the
modified version of Travel Ban kept his idea of travel ban intact, as the US
courts later concluded?
On March 15, a Hawaii court blocked
the Trump Administration’s second attempt to reintroduce the controversial Travel
Ban plan saying it was biased and discriminatory. The ban was upheld by a Circuit
Court of Appeals on May 25. Trump had signed the new executive order on March
6, weeks after the first futile attempt to ban immigration from some Muslim
majority countries.
In the new executive order on
Travel Ban, that, according to Trump is a watered down and politically correct
version, three months after he signed it, the Trump administration had made
some minor changes to the first version of the executive order which was issued
on January 27 so that it could evade the courts. For example, the second order
excluded Iraq from the list of countries facing the ban, i.e., Syria, Iran,
Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Sudan, and featured exemptions for green card holders,
permanent US residents and for those already having a US visa.
But the courts weren’t
satisfied. Comparing both versions of the Travel Ban executive order, the judge
of the Hawaii found "significant and unrebutted evidence of religious
animus driving the promulgation of the executive order and its related
predecessor."
Trump had termed the decision
of the Hawaii court an "unprecedented judicial overreach." When his
first Travel Ban executive order was stayed, he had slammed "the opinion
of the so-called judge which essentially took law-enforcement away from their
country" and claimed that the "decision was ridiculous and would be
overturned!" He has continued his tirade against the US judiciary which he
finds is rigged and compares it with that of the third world countries.
While alleging the courts to
be "slow and political", he claims that in order to help keep the US
safe, his administration is "extreme vetting" people coming into the
U.S..
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
In any event we are EXTREME
VETTING people coming into the U.S. in order to help keep our country safe. The
courts are slow and political!
4:14 PM - 5 Jun 2017
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/871679061847879682
©SantoshChaubey