First Lawsuit Filed Challenging Trump’s Order Banning Refugees from the United States

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 28, 2017

CONTACT
Juan Gastelum, [email protected], 213-375-3149

First Lawsuit Filed Challenging Trump’s Order Banning Refugees from the United States

NEW YORK — Today some of the nation’s leading civil rights groups filed the first legal challenge to the Trump administration’s executive order banning refugees and other individuals from certain countries from entering the United States. The complaint was filed in federal court in the Eastern District of New York on behalf of two Iraqi men who were targeted by insurgents for their associations with the U.S. military and who were approved for resettlement in the United States earlier this month. They were denied entry and detained at JFK Airport, though one has now been released.

Karen Tumlin, legal director at National Immigration Law Center, issued the following statement:

“Trump’s order keeps some of the world’s most vulnerable people in life-threatening danger. This order has wreaked havoc on the lives of the thousands of refugees who desperately need safe refuge from violence and terror, many of whom have already been approved to resettle in the United States and are traveling to be reunited with family and loved ones right now. Many refugees, like our clients, risked their lives to help the United States government. The fact that the government has now decided to turn its back on those who served and protected us isn’t just unconscionable—it’s unconstitutional.”

Today’s filing is available at www.nilc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/1-complaint.pdf.

More information about this case is available at www.nilc.org/darweesh-v-trump/.

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