Revision doesn’t erase Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’ intent, Chin says

State Attorney General Doug Chin, who filed the nation’s first state lawsuit Wednesday to block President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban, said the executive order still discriminates against residents of Muslim-majority countries in spite of the watered-down language.

“The argument that’s in our brief is that you can make the language as neutral as you want, but with other previous cases, the court is allowed to look back at the statements by (Trump) to find a discriminatory intent,” Chin said at a forum Saturday night.

Chin will make his arguments against the travel ban Wednesday in U.S. District Court at a hearing the day before the ban is scheduled to go into effect.

He was greeted Saturday with a standing ovation by the crowd of about 100 at Church of the Crossroads, which co-sponsored the forum, called “Immigration Justice for All in Hawaii.” The other co-sponsor was Hawai‘i J20+, a group founded to resist Trump’s policies; the name refers to the aftermath of Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

“President Trump can’t take back the words that he said,” whether on the campaign trail, as Republican nominee or president, Chin said.

“He’s the one who said ‘Muslim ban.’ The words ‘Muslim ban’ originated with President Trump,” Chin said.

He added that Trump repeatedly vowed “that when I become president, I’ll get Muslims out of this country, (and) it’s the Syrian refugees who are committing crimes, and they’re the ones who need to be removed from here.”

Other panelists included state Sen. Stanley Chang (D, Diamond Head-Kahala-Hawaii Kai); Matteo Cabellero, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii; John Egan, head of the Migration Counsel law firm; and Nandita Sharma, professor of sociology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and co-chairwoman of Hawai‘i J20+.

Following their remarks, local cardiologist Dr. Zia Khan thanked Chin for having the courage to stand up to the travel ban.

“I want to come up there and give you a hug,” he told Chin, and then did so with permission.

Khan, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Pakistan, said two other doctors in attendance have family members in Muslim-majority countries who would be affected by the ban.

Chin said he saw a distinct link between Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order and an address by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to about 50 colleagues at the National Association of Attorneys General meeting in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 27.

“President Trump told him to attack the drug cartels — they’re increasing, they’re coming over the border,” Chin recounted. “He said crime is on the upswing and it’s happening by people who are unlawfully in our country. So the answer is we need to get rid of people who are unlawfully in our country, and if we do that, crime will go down.”

Crime rates actually are at historic lows, Chin said.

But to hear the administration tell it, he said, “We’re at a very dangerous time, terrorism is ramping up a lot, crime being on the upswing, and people being unlawfully here, and they need to be removed.”

He said the new administration could find ways of vetting refugees that “just don’t involve discriminating against people by national origin. It’s the ‘nation of origin’ that is so chilling about this whole thing — that was something that was eliminated in the National Immigration Act of 1965.”

Though the president can issue executive orders in the interest of national security, “those powers are still limited by the Constitution and by the prohibitions against discriminating against national origin,” Chin said.