Supreme Court hands Donald Trump a win on travel ban

The US Supreme Court has ruled that Donald Trump’s travel ban can be implemented in full.

US President Donald Trump in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The US Supreme Court has ruled that Donald Trump’s travel ban can be implemented in full, allowing authorities to bar or restrict people from eight countries, six with majority Muslim populations.

The ruling is temporary while legal challenges to the ban are heard, but the decision hands the President a rare victory on the issue after the ban was repeatedly overturned by lower courts.

The ban applies to travellers from Chad, Iran, Libya, North ­Korea, Venezuela, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

It means that most citizens of those countries will be banned from entering the US for now. In most cases they will be unable to emigrate permanently to the US and will be barred from working, studying or holidaying in the country.

The decision means that even foreigners with bona fide family, business or educational ties to the US may now be restricted from entry to the country on a case-by-case basis.

“We are not surprised by today’s Supreme Court decision permitting immediate enforcement of the President’s proclamation limiting travel from countries presenting heightened risks of terrorism,” the White House said.

“The proclamation is lawful and essential to protecting our homeland. We look forward to presenting a fuller defence of the proclamation as the pending cases work their way through the courts.”

The ruling allows Mr Trump to reinstate his third version of the ban, which contained more concessions that the previous two. Each of the three versions of the ban had been defeated by lower courts on the grounds that they singled out Muslims and were therefore unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court’s seven-two verdict raises the likelihood that the court, which has a conservative majority, will uphold the final version of the ban next year after legal arguments are heard. The court gave no reason for its decision yesterday.

Two appeals courts — the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals and the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia — will hold arguments on the legality of the ban this week.

Both courts are dealing with the issue urgently and the ­Supreme Court said it expected those courts to reach decisions “with appropriate dispatch”.

Solicitor-General Noel Francisco said in a filing with the ­Supreme Court that Mr Trump had acted under his broad constitutional and statutory rights to control immigration.

The Trump administration says the ban is a matter of national security and makes Americans safer.

It denies the ban targets Muslims and argues it is not a response to Mr Trump’s calls on the campaign trail last year for a block on Muslims entering the US.

Critics of the travel restriction say it does amount to a ban on Muslims and is therefore unconstitutional. In October, judge Derrick Watson of the Federal District Court in Honolulu found the third version of the travel ban, issued by Mr Trump in September, “suffers from precisely the same maladies as its predecessor”.

He said it “plainly discriminates based on nationality” in violation of federal law “and the founding principles of this nation”.

Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said: “President Trump’s anti-Muslim prejudice is no secret. He has repeatedly confirmed it, including just last week on Twitter.

“It’s unfortunate that the full ban can move forward for now, but this order does not address the merits of our claims.”

However, Mr Francisco’s ­Supreme Court brief said the ­travel ban followed a “comprehensive, worldwide review of the ­information shared by foreign governments that is used to screen aliens seeking entry to the United States”.

“Based on that review, the proclamation adopts tailored entry ­restrictions to address extensive findings that a handful of particular foreign governments have ­deficient information-sharing and identity-management practices, or other risk factors.”

He said the revised travel ban “conclusively rebuts respondents’ claims that the entry restrictions were motivated by animus rather than protecting national security”.

Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia