The Trump administration says it is relying on U.S. immigration laws to include grandparents and grandchildren in the president’s partial travel ban on citizens from six predominantly Muslim countries.
That explanation is included in the government’s response to an emergency request by state Attorney General Douglas Chin for clarification on who can and cannot be included in the partial ban the U.S. Supreme Court approved last week.
Chin filed his request with U.S. District Judge Derrick K. Watson on Thursday.
The government filed its response Monday.
It is Watson who handed down an injunction in March preventing the government from enforcing a 120-day ban on refugees and 90-day ban on everybody else from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
The U.S. Supreme Court said last week it will consider the government’s appeal of the injunction. It also lifted a portion of the injunction as applied to those foreign nationals “who lack any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”
The high court said for persons the relationship must be a close familial one. For entities the relationship must be formal, documented and formed in the normal course and not just to skirt the travel ban.
Chin said the government is interpreting the Supreme Court’s order too narrowly by not including grandparents and grandchildren as close family.
U.S. immigration laws define qualified immigrants as spouses and fiances of citizens, and the spouses’ and fiances’ parents and accompanying children.
Guidelines the U.S. Department of State published on its website Thursday, just hours before the partial ban took effect, said only parents (including in-laws), spouses, children, sons- and daughters-in-law and whole, half and step-siblings are excluded from the ban. On Friday the State Department changed the guidelines to also exclude fiances.
The government asks Watson that if he is inclined to exclude anybody else from the travel ban, he first allow the administration to ask the Supreme Court to clarify its own ruling.
