Bloomberg
A Muslim student group in Maryland filed the first lawsuit over the latest version of the Trump administration’s travel ban against several Muslim-majority countries, plus North Korea and Venezuela.
The lawsuit filed by Iranian Alliances Across Borders
will again focus on President Donald Trump’s comments about Muslims before the election as the true reason for the ban rather than the increasingly detailed national security reasons provided by the White House. The Muslim group asked for nationwide injunction to block the ban while the case plays out.
“The recently generated national security rationale cannot wipe away the anti-Muslim bias that has animated President Trump’s dogged efforts to fulfill his promise to ban Muslims from entering this country,†the group, from the University of Maryland said in the complaint.
The addition of North Korean nationals and a small group of Venezuelan government officials to the ban is a calculated attempt to “paper over†the legal defects of the first two versions of the ban, according to the complaint. The revised restrictions, issued by Trump on September 24, limit travel to varying degrees from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, all of which were on the original list. The US will also restrict or ban travel from Chad, North Korea and Venezuela.