Supreme Court to Hear Travel Ban Case in October

Despite strong opinions from the Fourth and Ninth Courts of Appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the injunction on President Trump’s travel ban and allowed a version of it to go into effect. The Supreme Court will hear the arguments for the case in October, shortly after the ban is set to expire for nationals in the six identified countries. The ban on Syrian refugees is set to remain in effect until the end of October. Although the Supreme Court allowed the travel ban to be implemented, it remains unclear how the Court will ultimately decide the limits of the President’s powers in this area.

Although originally included, Iraq was removed from the list of countries targeted by the President’s executive action. In negotiating Iraq’s removal from the list of banned countries, Baghdad agreed to accept repatriates. (Iraq was among a number of countries that had refused to take back their deported nationals.) The result was targeted immigration sweeps in June in communities in Michigan and Tennessee with concentrated populations of ethnic Iraqis.