Three college students in California have joined the dozens of other people filing lawsuits against President Donald Trump in the two months he has held office by challenging his ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries.
The three students have accused Trump of violating the Constitution of the United States and of discrimination, citing that his Jan. 27 ban specifically targets a group of people based on their ethnicity. The students, a freshman at Stanford with a student visa, a 23-year-old student at University of California (UC) San Diego and an anonymous student from the UC Berkeley, are suing through the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) organization.
The situation began when the Stanford student, Hadil Al-Mowafak, was unable to visit her husband in Yemen due to Trump’s immigration ban. The executive order banned citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the United States for 90 days. The Royal Bank, a multinational financial service company, has estimated that this ban would outlaw roughly 218 million people, the total population of the seven countries. However, in the case of Al-Mowafak and many more, the ban affected people living in the United States today.
The student from UC Berkeley has decided to remain anonymous, but claims that Trump’s new order has jeopardized his or her job offer from a successful Silicon Valley company. This student has also identified that they carry the F-1 visa common among all three of the students.
This is not the first time Trump has possibly violated the Constitution, as evidenced by dozens of lawsuits.
“It was our hope that President Trump would take the necessary steps to avoid violating the U.S. Constitution before he took office,” said Noah Bookbinder, the Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “He did not. His constitutional violations are immediate and serious, so we were forced to take legal action.”
The controversy over the immigration ban centers on whether it is religious discrimination, or a conflict between nations. The suits claims:
“The federal government has made it clear that it intends to favor Christian immigrants over Muslims.”
The White House claims that the ban is simply targeting seven different nations, but many see the ban having different implications. The seven nations commonly share a population majority who identify with the Islamic religion, which the students claim to be the target of Trump’s travel ban. This is not a totally random accusation since, as Trump said during his presidential campaign in December of 2015, referring to himself in third person:
“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on!”
It will not be easy for a few students to win a legal battle against the president of the United States, but these three are not the only ones with a bone to pick against the President. According to the Los Angeles Times on Feb. 11th:
“More than 60 lawsuits have been filed against Trump in federal court in the three weeks since he became president on Jan. 20.”
