President Donald Trump’s travel ban is now a permanent feature of the United States’ immigration policy, as the Supreme Court sided with the government in Trump v. Hawaii. This is the Trump administration’s third attempt at a travel ban since January 2017.
The Court’s liberal justices dissented, resulting in a 5-4 ruling with an opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, reversing a ruling of the 9th Circuit Court that had put a hold on the travel ban. That hold is no longer in effect, meaning immigrants from Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen will be prevented from entering the U.S.
The Supreme Court’s decision affirmed that the president has sweeping powers over immigration law, and that those powers include denying entry to a “class” of people if the executive branch “finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”
The heart of the debate over the travel ban was whether it violated the First Amendment by specifically targeting Muslim-majority countries. In December 2015, then-candidate Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims” from entering the states. That would be unconstitutional, but the administration has argued that since Trump wasn’t president at the time, those words can’t be held against him. The majority of the Supreme Court agreed.
