Trump: U.S.

will win
appeal of judge's
travel ban order

By Yeganeh Torbati and Steve

Holland | WASHINGTON/PALM BEACH, FLA

U.S. President Donald Trump said the

Justice Department will win an appeal filed
late Saturday of a judge's order lifting a
travel ban he had imposed on citizens of
seven mainly Muslim countries.

"We'll win. For the safety of the country, we'll

win," he told reporters at his private Mar-a-
Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida shortly
after the Justice Department filed a notice
that it intends to appeal the order.

Trump's personal attack on U.S. District

Judge James Robart in Seattle went too far
for some, who said the president was
undermining an institution designed to check
the power of the White House and Congress.

As the ban lifted, refugees and thousands of

travelers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia,
Sudan, Syria and Yemen who had been
stopped in their tracks last weekend by
Trump's executive order scrambled to get
flights to quickly enter the United States.

The Justice Department did not say when it

would file its appeal with the Ninth Circuit
U.S. Court of Appeals of the ruling made by
Robart late on Friday that also lifted Trump's
temporary ban imposed on refugee
admissions.
The judge appointed by former Republican
President George W. Bush questioned the
constitutionality of Trump's order.

The three-judge panel that will decide

whether to immediately block the ruling
includes appointees of George W. Bush and
two former Democratic presidents, Jimmy
Carter and Barack Obama.

"The opinion of this so-called judge, which

essentially takes law-enforcement away from
our country, is ridiculous and will be
overturned!" Trump said on Twitter early on
Saturday. Trump has said "extreme vetting"
of refugees and immigrants is needed to
prevent terrorist attacks.

Throughout the day, Trump continued to

criticize the decision in tweets. Late
Saturday, Trump showed no signs of backing
down. "The judge opens up our country to
potential terrorists and others that do not
have our best interests at heart. Bad people
are very happy!" he tweeted.

Trumps tweets criticizing the judges

decision could make it tougher for Justice
Department attorneys as they seek to defend
the executive order in Washington state and
other courts, said Jonathan Turley, a law
professor at George Washington University,
adding that presidents are usually
circumspect about commenting on
government litigation.

"Its hard for the President to demand that

courts respect his inherent authority when
he is disrespecting the inherent authority of
the judiciary. That certainly tends to poison
the well for litigation," Turley said.

SEPARATION OF POWERS

It is unusual for a president to attack a

member of the judiciary, which the U.S.
Constitution designates as a check to the
 power of the executive branch and
Congress.
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Reached by email Saturday, Robart declined
comment on Trump's tweets.

Democratic U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy of

Vermont said in a statement Saturday that
Trump's "hostility toward the rule of law is not
just embarrassing, it is dangerous. He
seems intent on precipitating a constitutional
crisis."

"Read the 'so-called' Constitution," tweeted

Representative Adam Schiff, the top
 Democrat on the House Intelligence
committee.

In an interview with ABC scheduled to air on

Sunday, Vice President Mike Pence said he
did not think that Trump's criticisms of the
judge undermined the separation of powers.
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"I think the American people are very
accustomed to this president speaking his
mind and speaking very straight with them,"
Pence said, according to an excerpt of the
interview.
 The court ruling was the first move in what
could be months of legal challenges to
Trump's push to clamp down on immigration.
His order set off chaos last week at airports
across the United States where travelers
were stranded and thousands of people
gathered to protest.

Americans are divided over Trump's order. A

Reuters/Ipsos poll this week showed 49
percent favored it while 41 percent did not.

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Iraqi refugee Nizar Kassab and his family pose for pictures with their
passports in their temporary home in Beirut, Lebanon February 4,
2017. REUTERS/ Jamal Saidi
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Wes Parker, a retiree from Long Beach,

California, held a sign saying "Trump is love"
at the Los Angeles International Airport, and
said he supported the tighter measures.

"We just have to support the travel pause,"

said Parker, 62. "If you were a new president
coming in, wouldn't you want what you feel
safe with?"
Rights groups, Democrats and U.S. allies
have condemned the travel ban as
discriminatory. On Saturday, there were
protests against the immigrant curb in
Washington, New York, Los Angeles and
other cities.

At the White House, hundreds of protesters

chanted "Donald, Donald can't you see?
You're not welcome in D.C."
TRAVELERS MOVE WITH HASTE

The sudden reversal of the ban catapulted

would-be immigrants back to airports, with
uncertainty over how long the window to
enter the United States will remain open.

U.S. immigration advocacy groups including

the American Civil Liberties Union on
Saturday urged those with now valid visas
from the seven nations "to consider
rebooking travel to the United States
immediately" because the ruling could be
overturned or put on hold, while a U.S. State
Department official said the department
planned to admit refugees on Monday.

In Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region of

northern Iraq, Fuad Sharef and his family
prepared to fly on Saturday to Istanbul and
then New York before starting a new life in
Nashville, Tennessee.

"I am very happy that we are going to travel

today. Finally, we made it," said Sharef, who
was stopped from boarding a New York-
bound flight last week.

The Department of Homeland Security said

on Saturday it would return to its normal
procedures for screening travelers but that
the Justice Department would file for an
emergency stay of the order "at the earliest
possible time."

Some travelers told Reuters they were

cautious about the sudden change.
"I will not say if I have hope or not. I wait,
watch and then I build my hopes," said
Josephine Abu Assaleh, 60, who was
stopped from entering the United States after
landing in Philadelphia last week with five
members of her family.

"We left the matter with the lawyers. When

they tell us the decision has been canceled,
we will decide whether to go back or not,"
she told Reuters in Damascus, speaking by
telephone.

Virtually all refugees also were barred by

Trump's order, upending the lives of
thousands of people who have spent years
seeking asylum in the United States.

Friday night's court decision sent refugee

advocacy and resettlement agencies
scrambling to help people in the pipeline.

Iraqi refugee Nizar al-Qassab, 52, told

Reuters in Lebanon that his family had been
 due to travel to the United States for
resettlement on Jan. 31. The trip was
canceled two days before that and he was
now waiting for a phone call from U.N.
officials overseeing their case.

"It's in God's hands," he said.

(Additional reporting by Issam Abdullah in

Beirut, Dan Levine in Seattle, Alana Wise in
New York, Robert Chiarito and Nathan
Layne in Chicago, Daina Beth Solomon in
Los Angeles, and Julia Edwards Ainsley in
Washington; Writing by Roberta Rampton
and David Shepardson; Editing by Bill
Trott,Mary Milliken and Diane Craft)

Immigration chaos
and long nights led
to Washington's
court win
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Washington state's attorney general Bob Ferguson (C) speaks to

the media next to Washington state solicitor general Noah Purcell
(R) outside the U.S. federal courthouse in downtown Seattle
February 3, 2017. Picture taken February 3, 2017. REUTERS/Dan
Levine

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By Dan Levine and Lawrence

Hurley | SEATTLE/WASHINGTON

When Washington state Attorney General

Bob Ferguson arrived in Seattle last
Saturday after a trip to Florida, public
outrage over the immigration order issued
the previous day by President Donald Trump
was quickly growing. He went home, greeted
his family and then went to work.

By late Monday afternoon, just minutes

before the court closed for the day,
Ferguson, a Democrat, and his team of
lawyers were ready to file the first state
lawsuit seeking to block the order. On Friday,
they won a dramatic courtroom victory when
U.S. District Judge James Robart put on
hold the travel ban for refugees and citizens
of seven mainly Muslim countries.

The lawsuit emerged out of a chaotic 48-

hour period in which the need for immediate
action held sway over the kind of carefully
thought-out strategizing that usually leads up
to a major legal complaint being filed,
according to Ferguson and other attorneys
involved in actions against the order.

"We knew we had one shot," Ferguson said

in an interview, in reference to the bid for a
temporary restraining that would immediately
overturn Trump's executive order.

The lawsuit is one of several now filed

against the executive order around the
United States, but it was the first case
leading to a broad decision that applies
nationwide.
The fight over the immigration order is just
the first of what is likely to be a series of
court battles between Democratic attorneys
general, the top legal officers in liberal-
leaning states, and the administration.
Several attorneys general have already said
they expect to sue Trump on various issues if
he oversteps his authority, including on the
environment and consumer protection.

President Trump on Saturday ridiculed

Judge Robart, a George W. Bush appointee,
and his decision. The Justice Department
filed a formal appeal.

The Washington state lawyers worked

around the clock last Saturday and Sunday
against the backdrop of turbulent scenes at
U.S. airports, where immigrants were
detained by federal officials unprepared to
implement the president's directive.
There was little time to coordinate with other
states, though ultimately one other state,
Minnesota, joined the effort. Additional
states, including Virginia, New York and
Hawaii, have filed their own lawsuits or
sought to intervene in cases brought by
individuals affected by the ban.

State attorneys general did not collectively

decide to let Washington file first for any
strategic advantage, Ferguson said. Rather,
Washington was able most quickly to
marshal evidence of the harm Trump's order
caused to the state, which is crucial to
establish legal standing.

Ferguson called the general counsels at

major Washington employers Amazon.com
Inc. and Expedia Inc. for their support. The
companies eventually filed sworn statements
in court saying the ban hurt their businesses.
The state lawyers also gathered information
on the harm to state residents and
institutions such as the university system,
which the judge appeared to find persuasive.
TURNING THE TABLES

The legal assault on the order has involved

Ferguson and other Democratic lawyers
taking a leaf from the play-book followed by
Republican states that successfully
challenged actions taken by Trump's
predecessor, former President Barack
Obama.

Washington state's claims rely in part on the

same legal arguments that Texas and 25
other Republican-led states made when they
challenged Obama's November 2014 plan to
protect up to four million immigrants from
deportation. In that case, the Republican
states argued that Obama overstepped his
 constitutional powers by infringing upon the
authority of Congress.

Washington and other states say Trump has

violated the Constitution too, albeit on
different grounds. They say he has violated
protections against discrimination on the
basis of religion by targeting Muslims. The
state has a responsibility to protect the
"health, safety, and well-being" of all its
residents, the lawsuit said.

In the 2014 case, Texas, like Washington

state in the Trump case, asked for a
nationwide injunction.
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Trump: U.S. will win appeal of judge's travel

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U.S. expects to resume refugee admissions

on Monday
Where the fight against Trump's order differs
from the Texas challenge to Obama is that
various lawsuits have been filed around the
country by states and civil rights groups. The
Texas case was a single lawsuit that the
other states joined.

ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt said there was

little time to talk strategy among the many
states and advocacy groups opposing the
order, as would normally happen. "It's
moving too quickly, he said.

That sense of urgency was all too clear to

Washington state lawyers on Monday as
they feverishly gathered the required
documents to file with the lawsuit, including
the motion for a temporary restraining order.

Unlike other court papers filed electronically,

a paper copy of that motion had to be
delivered to the clerk's office in person. So
Noah Purcell, the solicitor general, led a race
 to the Seattle courthouse with others from
the office just as the building was about to
close. They pulled up to the courthouse,
jumped out of the car and ran up the steps to
the doors before they were locked. They
arrived just in time.

(Reporting by Dan Levine in Seattle and

Lawrence Hurley in Washington; Writing by
Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Jonathan
Weber and Dan Grebler)
NEXT IN POLITICS

'So-called judge' derided by Trump known

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U.S. Judge James Robart emerged from relative obscurity on
Saturday as the first justice to come under fire from the president
since he took office after his temporary order to lift Donald Trump's
immigration ban.

Thousands protest in London against

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LONDON Several thousand people demonstrated outside the U.S.

embassy in London on Saturday against President Donald Trump
and his temporary ban on refugees and nationals from seven
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Trump's pick for Army secretary drops out

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German magazine
sparks furor with
image of Trump
beheading Statue
of Liberty
U. S. President Donald Trump is depicted beheading the Statue of
Liberty in this illustration on the cover of the latest issue of German
news magazine Der Spiegel. Spiegel/Handout via REUTERS

German weekly magazine Der Spiegel

sparked controversy at home and abroad on
Saturday with a front cover illustration of U.S.
 President Donald Trump beheading the
Statue of Liberty.

It depicts a cartoon figure of Trump with a

bloodied knife in one hand and the statue's
head, dripping with blood, in the other. It
carries the caption: "America First".

The artist who designed the cover, Edel

Rodriguez, a Cuban who came to the United
States in 1980 as a political refugee, told
The Washington Post: "It's a beheading of
democracy, a beheading of a sacred
symbol."
ADVERTISING

The cover set off a debate on Twitter and in

German and international media, with
Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, a member of
Germany's Free Democrats (FDP) and vice
president of the European Parliament,
describing it as "tasteless".
The cover follows a series of attacks on
Berlin's policies by Trump and his aides,
marking a rapid deterioration in German
relations with the United States. Chancellor
Angela Merkel was the go-to European ally
for former U.S. president Barack Obama,
who praised her as "an outstanding partner".

Last month, Trump said Merkel had made a

"catastrophic mistake" with her open-door
migration policy, and this week his top trade
adviser said Germany was using a "grossly
undervalued" euro to gain advantage over
the United States and its European partners.

No one was available for comment on the

Spiegel cover at the U.S. embassy in Berlin.

(Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Alexander

Smith)