Patrick Marley

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

MADISON – Wisconsin was pulled into the legal fight Monday over President Donald Trump’s refugee and immigration ban, with a Syrian man filing suit over his inability to finalize asylum for his wife and 3-year-old daughter.

The man – a Sunni Muslim who filed the federal lawsuit under the name John Doe to protect his family's identity – arrived in the United States in 2014 after two military forces extorted, falsely imprisoned and tortured him.

He was granted asylum in May 2016 and soon afterward sought asylum for his wife and daughter, who remain in war-torn Aleppo.

According to the lawsuit, the grants of asylum for his wife and daughter were in the final stages of being processed when they were halted by Trump’s executive order that barred Syrian refugees from the United States. The order also suspended immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries.

The order has been the subject of numerous lawsuits, and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California on Thursday upheld a temporary block of Trump's order.

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That ruling applies to ports of entry and the administration likely won't view it as applying to John Doe's wife and daughter because they remain overseas, said one of the man's attorneys, Andrei Vrabie. The man, who lives in Dane County, also brought the case because the appeals court ruling is temporary and he wants a permanent order so he can ensure he is reunited with his family, Vrabie said.

“They are living in a war zone, far away from plaintiff, and in hiding to avoid rape or murder at the hands of the (Syrian Arab Army). They lack adequate food, shelter and basic medical care. In short, their lives are in real and imminent danger,” Vrabie and other attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.

Underscoring the danger to the man's family, the lawsuit notes that the man's son died in 2015 at age 3 when he fell three floors while trying to escape his home when it was hit with rocket fire.

The lawsuit contends Trump's executive order violates the separation of church and state and other provisions of the U.S. Constitution.

“The true purpose of the executive order is hostility toward Islam,” the attorneys wrote. “The proffered secular purpose, national security, is a sham.”

The man hopes to have the case, which is being heard by U.S. District Judge William Conley in Madison, resolved quickly.

"We'll be pushing as fast as we can," Vrabie said.

Vrabie's firm, Holwell Shuster & Goldberg of New York, is representing the man for free.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice declined comment.

Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel has stayed out of the legal dispute over the executive order. Soon after Trump issued it, the Republican attorney general said he was reviewing the executive order but did not know yet whether Trump had overreached or the state had been harmed.

Last week, Schimel spokesman Johnny Koremenos said there was no action for the state to take because of court rulings that have blocked the executive order. He did not provide additional comment on Monday after the new lawsuit was filed.

Patrick Marley can be reached at patrick.marley@jrn.com and twitter.com/patrickdmarley.