Travel Bans, Birthright Citizenship And No More “National Injunctions” —Things Are Looking Up
10 years ago, when Donald Trump was running to be 45th President of the United States, there was a Muslim mass murder in San Bernardino by a husband and wife team. The husband, Syed Rizwan Farook was born in the US and wife Tashfeen Malik was recent immigrant from Pakistan.
Here they are entering the country.
As a result of the San Bernardino attack, coming shortly after the awful Bataclan attacks in Paris, Trump made a statement calling for"a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on."
Donald J. Trump Statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration
(New York, NY) December 7th, 2015, -- Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on. According to Pew Research, among others, there is great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population. Most recently, a poll from the Center for Security Policy released data showing "25% of those polled agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad" and 51% of those polled, "agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah." Shariah authorizes such atrocities as murder against non-believers who won't convert, beheadings and more unthinkable acts that pose great harm to Americans, especially women.[More]
At the time I couldn’t help thinking that “until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on" would be a de facto permanent ban—said representatives do not have a good record of figuring out what is going on. This led to protests from Left and the MSM that this would be a violation of the First Amendment—which obviously doesn’t apply to people outside the US—and when Trump was elected in 2016, the ban was not based on the Muslim religion specifically, but on what used to be referred to as “National Origins”, I.E. which countries the immigrants came from.
Since Muslim countries don’t have a First Amendment, almost all immigrants from said countries are Muslim, so banning immigration from a list of countries which could be described as basically Terrorstan (Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen) would be effective. How where these countries chosen? That’s very interesting—as I pointed out in a January, 2017 post titled Obama Also Put A Hold On Muslim Immigrants In 2011, And The Countries He Banned Were The Same (But He Didn't Mean It).
The Obama Administration, which had put a 2011 hold on Iraqi refugees to prevent terrorist attacks also passed the “Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015” which targeted the same list of countries.
Obama was never attacked for that because, in my view, Obama's defenders felt that it's the same as his "opposition" to gay marriage—he may have banned Muslim immigrants from ISIS-type countries in 2011, when he was facing reelection but he didn't really mean it.
Trump, by contrast, really wants to protect America, and there's a lot of opposition to that.
In 2017, as in 2025, Trump policies were attacked by random judges. In the case of the “travel ban” a Hawaiian Judge named Derrick Kahala Watson ignored the words of the law (passed during the Obama Administration, above) as well as the text of the Trump Administration Executive Order and based his ruling on Trump’s 2015 campaign statements, as well as the bogus idea that the US Government can’t discrimination against foreign Muslims. At the time, I thought that was crazy. I wasn’t the only person who thought it was crazy—so did Never-Trumper David Frum in the Atlantic:
Watson’s imaginative reasoning in Hawaii v. Trump asserts a new judicial power to disregard formal law if the president’s personal words create a basis for mistrusting his motives. In the age of Trump, many will be sympathetic to this judicial power—but it is crammed with dangers, too.
The Dangerous Precedent Set by Judicial Attacks on Trump's Travel Ban | Judge Derrick Watson’s imaginative reasoning asserts a new power to disregard formal law if the president’s words create a basis for mistrusting his motives, March 16, 2017
In June 2018, the Supreme Court decided that the Judges who had tried to block the “Travel Ban” were crazy…by a vote of 5 to 4. The composition of the Supreme Court has changed since 2018, as symbolized by this satirical Babylon Bee story:
More seriously, Anthony Kennedy was replaced by Brett Kavanaugh, Ruth Bader Ginzburg has been replaced by Amy Coney Barrett and sadly (thanks to the 2020 election) Stephen Breyer was replaced by Kentanji Brown Jackson.
That makes this Supreme Court even more likely to support his latest Travel Ban:
Trump announces travel ban on 12 countries and partial restrictions for 7 others
Trump framed the new restrictions, which primarily target African and Asian countries, as necessary to fortify national security and combat terrorism. by Nnamdi Egwuonwu and Tara Prindiville, NBC, June 4, 2025
In a return of one of the most controversial policies of his first term, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation Wednesday banning nationals from a dozen countries, including Afghanistan, Haiti and the Republic of Congo, from entering the United States.
Trump framed the new restrictions, which primarily target African and Asian countries, as necessary to fortify national security and combat terrorism.
"As President, I must act to protect the national security and national interest of the United States and its people. I remain committed to engaging with those countries willing to cooperate to improve information-sharing and identity-management procedures, and to address both terrorism-related and public-safety risks," the proclamation read.
Nationals of 12 countries will be barred from entering the United States: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Several of the countries on the list, according to Trump’s proclamation, regularly declined to accept the return of their nationals or had visa overstay rates the administration deemed “unacceptable” and indicative of “a blatant disregard for United States immigration laws.” [More]
Note that the Visa Overstay rates and refusal to accept returns are as just as important as the terrorism, which is rare compared to the simple fact of illegal immigration with its crime and welfare.
If you read the order [Restricting The Entry of Foreign Nationals to Protect the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats, The White House, June 4, 2025] Trump goes into detail. For example:
(b) Burma
(i) According to the Overstay Report, Burma had a B‑1/B-2 visa overstay rate of 27.07 percent and an F, M, and J visa overstay rate of 42.17 percent. Additionally, Burma has historically not cooperated with the United States to accept back their removable nationals.
(ii) The entry into the United States of nationals of Burma as immigrants and nonimmigrants is hereby fully suspended
The really wonderful thing about this: it says “Burma”, paying absolutely no attention to the efforts of the Burmese ruling military junta convince people to call Burma “Myanmar”.
In 2017, when Derrick Kahala Watson ruled, in a case brought in his court in Hawaii, that the entire country had to accept immigrants from the counties on the banned list, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in an interview “I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power…”
People mocked this at the time: didn’t Sessions know that the “island in the Pacific” was one of the United States and that therefore Judge Brown was a United States Federal Judge, and therefore he had amazing powers over the entire United States?
Well, of course he knew all that except the last part: the “national injunction” amazing power that Judges claimed against Trump.
Sessions’s formal statement as Attorney General said
“Once again, we are faced with a situation in which a single federal district court has undertaken by a nationwide injunction to micromanage decisions of the co-equal Executive Branch related to our national security. By this decision, the district court has improperly substituted its policy preferences for that of the Executive branch, defying both the lawful prerogatives of the Executive Branch and the directive of the Supreme Court.
"The district court has issued decisions that are entrusted to the Executive Branch, undermined national security, delayed necessary action, created confusion, and violated a proper respect for separation of powers. The Supreme Court has had to correct this lower court once, and we will now reluctantly return directly to the Supreme Court to again vindicate the rule of law and the Executive Branch’s duty to protect the nation.”
As noted above, the Supreme Court in 2018 did vindicate Trump and Sessions over the President’s powers over immigration, but today, the Supreme Court in 2025 in effect abolished the “national” or “universal” injunctions of lower courts—by a vote of 6 to 3, in a decision written by Amy Coney Barrett.
See US supreme court limits federal judges’ power to block Trump orders, Guardian, June 27, 2025 and Supreme Court Nukes Universal Injunctions (UPDATED) Justice Barrett writes for the Court's majority that universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable power of federal courts, by Jonathan H. Adler, The Volokh Conspiracy, June 27, 2025.
Trump v CASA, INC. started as a case about “birthright citizenship” which is sort of still undecided, but it turns out that Justice John Roberts and Trump’s Supreme Court picks agree that the Judiciary has been taking too much power, and if they want to keep their own Supreme Court power, they’re going to have to stop lower court judges from blocking the will of the American people on immigration—which is a victory not only for Trump, but for America.
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