Donald Trump’s Muslim Ban

When campaigning for president, Donald Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States. In January 2017, one week after his inauguration, President Trump banned travel for immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries and halted the refugee resettlement program. His executive order was almost immediately halted by federal courts in lawsuits filed across the country, including by Judge Victoria Roberts in Detroit who enjoined portions of the executive order that prevented lawful permanent residents from the barred countries from returning to the United States. The ACLU of Michigan joined with the Arab American Civil Rights League (ACRL) in challenging the order in the Detroit case. In 2018 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the lower courts erred in granting a preliminary injunction against the ban because they applied the wrong legal standard, but in July 2019 Judge Roberts ruled that our case can proceed under the standard the Supreme Court set. In November 2019 the government sought and obtained permission to appeal to the Sixth Circuit. After President Biden took office, he rescinded the Muslim Ban, and in February 2021 the case was dismissed as moot. (Arab American Civil Rights League v. Trump; ACLU Attorneys Miriam Aukerman, Dan Korobkin, Monica Andrade, Elaine Lewis, and Rohit Rajan; Cooperating Attorneys Jason Raofield, Nishchay Maskay, and Alyson Sandler of Covington & Burling, Julian Mortenson of Miller Canfield, and Margo Schlanger and Samuel Bagenstos of U-M Law School; co-counsel Nabih Ayad, Rula Aoun, Kassem Dakhlallah, Mona Fadlallah, Ali Hammoud, and Natalie Qandah.)