White House asks US Supreme Court to allow full travel ban

WASHINGTON: The White House asked the US Supreme Court on Monday to allow President Donald Trump’s latest travel ban to take full effect after an appeals court in California ruled last week that only parts of it could be enacted.
A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Nov. 13 partially granted a Trump administration request to block at least temporarily a judge’s ruling that had put the new ban on hold. It ruled the government could bar entry of people from six Muslim-majority countries with no connections to the United States. Trump’s ban was announced on Sept. 24 and replaced two previous versions that had been impeded by federal courts. The administration’s appeal to the top US court argued that the latest travel ban differed from the previous orders “both in process and in substance” and that the differences showed it “is based on national-security and foreign-affairs objectives, not religious animus. “It also argued that even if the 9th Circuit ruled to uphold the partial ban, the Supreme Court was likely to overturn that decision as it had “the last time courts barred the President from enforcing entry restrictions on certain foreign nationals in the interest of national security. “Last week’s appeals court ruling meant the ban would only apply to people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Chad who did not have connections to the United States. Those connections are defined as family relationships and “formal, documented” relationships with US -based entities such as universities and resettlement agencies.