Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin speaks to reporters in May. The state of Hawaii had sued over President Donald Trump's travel ban. | Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty Images Judge blocks Trump's latest travel ban order Justice Department vows appeal after judge finds third version of ban appears to run afoul of immigration law.

President Donald Trump's third attempt to implement a travel ban has, for now, met the same fate as the previous two: blocked by litigation in the the federal courts.

In an effort to salvage the policy in the face of a legal onslaught, White House and Justice Department lawyers repeatedly refined the presidential directive, sometimes incurring Trump's public wrath over changes he dismissed as "politically correct."


None of those adjustments appeared to matter much to Honolulu-based U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson, who blocked Trump's second travel ban in March and granted a temporary restraining order against the third one on Tuesday.

Watson concluded that Trump's latest effort, a proclamation issued last month restricting travel to the U.S. by citizens of eight countries, still appeared to run afoul of federal immigration law.

The State Department confirmed Tuesday afternoon that the decision effectively rescinded much of Trump's policy, at least for the time being, prompting officials to "resume regular processing of visas" for nationals of Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.

Restrictions Trump was set to add on travel by North Koreans and certain Venezuelan government officials were not disturbed by the ruling and will take effect as planned on Wednesday, officials said. However, those limits affect few travelers.

The other six nations covered in the latest ban are majority Muslim.

Tuesday's ruling notes that Trump has never renounced or repudiated his campaign-trail promise to ban Muslims from traveling to the U.S. and that critics have observed his recent tweets show his "record has only gotten worse."

However, Watson does not dwell on that issue, nor did he delve into the question of whether Trump's new order is — as critics contend — yet another attempt to follow through on the promised Muslim ban.

Instead, the judge said in his 40-page ruling that Trump's justification for the travel restrictions contained in his Sept. 24 directive was insufficient to invoke a provision in federal law allowing the president to block admission of "any class of aliens....detrimental to the interests of the United States."

Morning Shift newsletter Get the latest on employment and immigration, every weekday morning — in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Trump's order "contains internal incoherencies that markedly undermine its stated 'national security' rationale," wrote Watson, an Obama appointee. "Numerous countries fail to meet one or more of the global baseline criteria described in [the directive], yet are not included in the ban...Moreover, [the order's] individualized country findings make no effort to explain why some types of visitors from a particular country are banned, while others are not."

Watson also said Trump's order was too sweeping to address the concerns the president set forth about inadequate intelligence sharing by foreign governments regarding travelers who could pose terrorist threats.

"The generalized findings regarding each country's performance...do not support the vast scope of" the directive, the judge wrote. "In other words, the categorical restrictions on entire populations of men, women, and children, based upon nationality, are a poor fit for the issues regarding the sharing of 'public-safety and terrorism-related information' that the President identifies."

"This leads to absurd results," Watson added, calling the new policy both "overbroad and underinclusive."

A Justice Department spokesman vowed to appeal.

"Today's ruling is incorrect, fails to properly respect the separation of powers, and has the potential to cause serious negative consequences for our national security," spokesman Ian Prior said. "The Department of Justice will appeal in an expeditious manner, continue to fight for the implementation of the President's order, and exercise our duties to protect the American people.”

A statement released by the White House, but not attributed to any specific official there, decried the ruling.

"Today’s dangerously flawed district court order undercuts the President’s efforts to keep the American people safe and enforce minimum security standards for entry into the United States," the statement released by the Office of the Press Secretary said. "These restrictions are vital to ensuring that foreign nations comply with the minimum security standards required for the integrity of our immigration system and the security of our Nation. We are therefore confident that the Judiciary will ultimately uphold the President’s lawful and necessary action and swiftly restore its vital protections for the safety of the American people."

Trump's original travel ban order, issued a week after he took office in January, covered seven majority-Muslim countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The directive led to widespread confusion about its application to existing visa and green card-holders. Protests ensued at airports across the U.S., some travelers were detained or deported, and judges ultimately blocked the bulk of the directive.

In March, the president withdrew that order and replaced it with a new one that dropped Iraq from the list and clarified that the policy would not impact those who already have visas or green cards. That order suspended visa issuance to citizens of the six affected countries and halted refugee admissions from across the globe.

That second order was also stopped by the courts, but in June the Supreme Court allowed the directive to take partial effect, with exceptions exempting foreigners with family or work ties to the U.S.

As the 90-day suspension ran out last month, Trump issued his third travel ban directive, imposing varying restrictions on eight countries. Most were majority Muslim, including the new addition of Chad. Sudan was dropped from the list, but the president also added limits on travel by North Koreans and certain government officials from Venezuela.

The additions of North Korean and Venezuelan appeared likely to impact a very small number of travelers.

Critics argued those two additions were merely window dressing and all the travel-related orders are variants of the Muslim ban Trump promised during his presidential campaign last year.

Justice Department lawyers have insisted that the policies are unrelated to that promise. However, Trump's repeated public criticism of his legal team and his complaints about pressure to limit and sanitize the ban have fueled suspicion that the directives are an attempt to make good on his campaign promises.

The restraining order, sought by the state of Hawaii, a local Muslim cleric and others, came hours before the added restrictions in Trump's new directive were set to kick in at midnight.

Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin hailed the judge's ruling as another in a series of victories for opponents of Trump's policy.

"This is the third time Hawaii has gone to court to stop President Trump from issuing a travel ban that discriminates against people based on their nation of origin or religion," Chin said in a statement. "Today is another victory for the rule of law. We stand ready to defend it.”

At least half a dozen lawsuits had been filed against the new iteration of Trump's travel ban. A federal judge in Maryland heard arguments Monday on three suits requesting preliminary injunctions against the new policy, but did not immediately rule on the requests.

The Hawaii judge's opinion opens with what may be an oblique reference to Trump's recent criticism of National Football League players for kneeling in protest during the National Anthem.

"Professional athletes mirror the federal government in this respect: they operate within a set of rules, and when one among them forsakes those rules in favor of his own, problems ensue. And so it goes with EO-3," the judge wrote, using an abbreviation for Trump's September travel ban directive.