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Texas backs Trump on travel ban executive order

Texas has become the only state to support President Donald Trump's travel ban executive order in a pending federal appeals court challenge.

The Lone Star State filed a legal brief Wednesday urging the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to lift the broad restraining order issued earlier this month in a lawsuit brought by two other states, Washington and Minnesota.

Last week, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit rejected the Trump administration's request to stay a district court judge's restraining order blocking Trump's directive banning travel to the U.S. by citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries and shutting down refugee admissions.

Texas' new amicus brief argues for broad executive power in the area of immigration, notwithstanding the state's leadership of a successful legal challenge to President Barack Obama's efforts to use executive actions to give quasi-legal status and work permits to millions more illegal immigrants.

"While Congress provided these detailed criteria to significantly restrict the Executive’s ability to unilaterally allow aliens to be lawfully present in the country, Congress simultaneously delegated the Executive broad discretionary authority to exclude aliens from the country," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Solicitor General Scott Keller wrote.

"Extending...constitutional rights as envisioned by plaintiffs would have grave implications, such as imposing delay, cost, and risk while courts scrutinize federal officials’ concerns with existing procedures for vetting aliens seeking entry into the country. When it comes to deciding the best way to use a sovereign’s power over its borders to manage risk, courts have long recognized that the political branches are uniquely well situated," the Texas brief argues. "Plaintiffs’ calls for interference with this core executive power should thus be analyzed with intense skepticism."

Texas also contends that Trump's order does not, as critics have suggested, target Muslims.

"The Executive Order classifies aliens by nationality, not religion, and plaintiffs’ pretext argument is wrong. The Executive Order’s temporary pause in travel from seven countries and in the refugee program is religion-neutral," the Texas officials write.

A total of 18 states and the District of Columbia are opposing the travel ban at the 9th Circuit. A group of 15 states led by New York filed an amicus brief arguing that the Trump order is unconstitutional. Hawaii separately sought to intervene in the case and join the legal challenge, a move the appeals court rebuffed. However, Hawaii has its own federal lawsuit against the order pending in federal court in Honolulu. Virginia also brought its own suit, winning on Monday a preliminary injunction against part of Trump's directive

While the Justice Department has maintained that Washington and Minnesota lack standing to challenge the Trump directive, the Texas brief does not mention the standing issue. State challengers to the travel ban have repeatedly invoked as precedent the Texas-led suit over Obama's immigration moves. So, too, have federal district court judges in Washington state and Virginia, as well as the judges at the 9th Circuit as they turned down the feds' stay request last week.

A broader set of 9th Circuit judges is now considering whether the stay request should be taken up by an 11-judge appeals court panel. In addition, further briefs in the case are set to be submitted to the original three-judge panel in the coming weeks.