Travel Ban Case Is Shadowed by One of Supreme Court’s Darkest Moments

What bans must we institute to keep us safe from the terrorism of White Supremacists who adore Trump and his regime? This terrorism has claimed the lives of more people in this land than any other yet how is it that we dare not call it by its name or adopt sweeping measures to deal with it?

Trump is no FDR. And neither the "FDR Drive" (apparently the NYC highway along the East River that Trump is referencing) nor any other road for that matter is going to be named after Trump. Not even a well-done steak served with ketchup. Maybe a Trump Tower in Moscow though.

Mr. Liptak does not go far enough in acknowledging the vast differences between the internment of Japanese-Americans and Trump's executive order. Not only were many Japanese-Americans US citizens, there was never any credible evidence that they were engaged in espionage or sabotage. In a classic racist no win situation, the absence of these acts was twisted by the federal government as proof that they were just waiting to wreak havoc in the future. In contrast, we have had several document terrorist acts or attempts by Muslims. In the case of Japanese-Americans, their property was seized and they were incarcerated in internment camps from their homes. Trump's order does not involve jailing Muslims. All of these differences don't support Trump's executive order, but trying to bring up Korematsu is a flawed argument.

There's a reason why folks like Liptak and Greenhouse can't accurately predict the outcome of SC deliberations, and it's a simple one. The supremes can decide any which way they want and then cover that decision with legal machinations to support it. A perfect example is "Citizens United". It depends on which way the political wind is blowing at the time.

The Trump administration at first claimed that they merely wanted to review the vetting and initiate "extreme vetting." That in itself was bogus since anyone actually getting to this country was already undergoing 'extreme vetting' usually taking years spent in refugee camps or other temporary places. It is clear that Trump and his cabal simply want to keep out the "other" in what they consider to be a white Christian country.

Those who would trade liberty for security, deserve neither.

I strongly disagree with Mr. Trump's Muslim ban. It is the wrong solution looking for the wrong problem. It will do nothing to keep us safer, and may even be counterproductive, as a recruiting tool for those who wish to do us harm. That said, there is a way that the Trump administration could have instituted a travel ban properly and constitutionally. They could have come up with objective measures for foreign nations regarding the quality of information they could provide to us to vet their citizens before we allow them to enter the United States. This policy would have overlapped with most of the eight nations in the original ban, and would have included some other (non-Muslim majority) failed states as well, incidentally. So there are two possible motives for Mr. Trump's travel ban to be framed the way it is: -1) The Trump administration is incompetent. -2) The Trump administration is doing this as political posturing for his base. If they succeed in the Supreme Court, they win through expanded executive power. If they lose, they continue to have the issue, and they blame the establishment for shutting them down.

If "we the people" were not induced to be constantly frightened of whatever is lurking under the bed, we might look in our own back yard as well as the rest of the world and ask how we can help. Not to make friends, just to be real.

Does not this ban in part reflect the fact that some of these countries have no way of vetting or proving the records of their citizens? Meaning we have absolutely no idea who they really are or their histories? Right now in Europe there are many 100,000's of thousands of self proclaimed refugees who now have to be sorted out by their receiving countries. Many of them are not who they say they are, ages, country of origin, names, etc. We should not let those enter our country under similar circumstances. Some people from those countries are not our friends and want to kill us. Erring on the side of caution is not a reprehensible idea nor should it be equated with putting them into prison camps.

It is hard to imagine that Gorsuch or Alito if they have a chance to make a decision so shameful would not jump at the opportunity. Roberts or Thomas most likely would also. But I feel there is a possibility however remote that some faint small voice in them will say, "Not this time."

There is no parallel between the 1942 executive order that sent more than 100,000 people of Japanese to internment camps and the temporary travel ban imposed on Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and Venezuela. The 1942 Japanese Internment was controversial because it included about 70,000 Japanese Americans who resided on the West Coast as well as Japanese nationals. The current travel ban does not impose travel restriction on U.S. citizens and it does not apply to just one ethnic, racial or religious group.

I view terrorisim as a multi-faceted-geometrically expanding phenomena. It feeds upon itself as it replicates, killing everything. LIke a pseudo benign organism it slips in unnoticed as it has in Europe, waiting in the shadows to attack the values and thevulnerabilities of the weak and helpless. I view this as something to be contained and extinguished, not something I want to spread unneccessarily if it can be avoided.

Often, controversial ideas of this administration have been cloaked in the flag and seasoned with fear. During the campaign and to this day, Trump has used dog whistles to signal racism and hatred of the Other. This president has time and again with great pride, told his supporters he has kept his campaign promises. He has built his presidency on securing his base while attacking all of the rest of us, his enemies. Now when he is being called on it before the Supreme Court, his stand becomes that of the ordered coward; “oh, I didn’t mean it that way”. Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, it was once said. It could have the mission statement of this administration.

What we did to the Japanese living here in America during WW 2 is and forever will be a stain upon our nation. I consider FDR to be one of our finest presidents, but what he did was morally and ethically wrong. It was not only the Japanese, but also to a lesser degree immigrants from Italy who were discriminated against. My own Sicilian immigrant grandfather, a SF fisherman and the father of 12, had his livelihood, his boat, impounded for several years because our government did not trust him and his compadres. But the Japanese....far, far worse. Do this president and his Congress have no shame? Have they not learned from our transgressions in the past? Of course not. Their bigotry and racism is a cancer, metastatically spreading through all groups who are considered the "other"...black, brown, Muslim, gay, and on it goes. Now the real test will be seen. How will our Supreme Court rule? Perhaps, a better question is: Will nativism taint and infect its decision and final "judgement" on what is moral and just?

Can we just point out too that Trump's ban is not just indefensible, not just bigoted, but also moronic? He sold it as an anti-Muslim ban, despite the fact that white Christians commit far more terrorist acts in America than Muslims. And Venezuela is on the list, which has practically no Muslims living there at all. We also get nearly no Venezuelans coming to America because of historical feuding between our countries. And as if that wasn't dumb enough, North Korea is on the list. Definitely no Muslims there at all, but North Koreans also cannot leave their nation. The few that manage to escape go to South Korea or China, and go no further most of the time. The very few that have made it to America are welcomed here for their propaganda uses. So this ban of Trump's is clearly bigoted and idiotic. Thus I think the Supreme Court will uphold it, 5 to 4, because there are 5 devout conservatives on the court, and I have no faith in their ability to stick with the Constitution or dispense justice.

"In defending the Japanese internment, the Justice Department told the Supreme Court that “the group as a whole contained an unknown number of persons who could not readily be singled out and who were a threat to the security of the nation.” Mr. Trump’s executive order bars entry of large numbers of people “about whom the United States lacks sufficient information to assess the risks they pose.”" This logic could be applied to any group. Want to bar Christians? Sure. Jews? Sure. Buddhists? Sure. Hindus? Sure? Pick a people and in any group there are some who seek to do harm; they are a very small proportion, but they exist. The writing of Martin Niemöller was never more apt.

Immigration/visa bans do no damage whatsoever to American citizens, who are the people the Constitution was written to protect. End of story. People hate Trump, and I get it. But not everything he says or wants is implicitly wrong. Immigrating to or visiting our country is purely a privilege, not a right. And we need to stop seeing it as a right.

Does any Supreme Court want to be using Korematsu as a valid precedent? The underlying rationale, that one must ban the whole even if one cannot identify any infected parts, is the same.

As a law student in 1962, Prof Fred Rodell took his Con Law class to visit the Supreme Court. We visited with his friend Justice Black in his chambers, and we were invited to ask questions. I asked whether the Justice would decide Korematsu the same way today. He responded approximately as follows: "If President Roosevelt told me the same things today that he told me in 1942, I would decide it the same way." I do not know how that might bear on the instant case. But although I had been passionately critical of the Korematsu decision, I confess that a great jurist taking that position pulled me back a bit.

In 2017 an exhibit at the SF Presidio: “Exclusion explicitly invites visitors to contemplate what can be learned from this shocking time in our history to help us contend with present-day issues—namely racial profiling, anti-immigrant sentiment, mass incarceration, and civil rights discrimination, as well as questions regarding the Constitutionality of Executive Order 9066,” said Karen Korematsu, Founder and Executive Director of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute." The exhibit showed the formal apology of the U.S Government "Nearly 40 years later, the federal government unequivocally stated that “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership” had motivated this mass incarceration during World War II—not “military necessity.” and admitted lies included in the government's original position that this was a military necessity. The facts also show that approximately 1/3 of the people incarcerated were not U.S. citizens, but "were non-citizens unable to obtain naturalized citizenship by federal law." The fact remains that this administration has repeatedly identified the reason for the Muslim ban as discrimination based on unfounded hysteria against Muslims and has shown no other reason. This is irrational hysteria fomented by the biggest liar in the administration who, by the way, thinks American terrorists are "fine people." The lower appellate courts repeatedly found the ban illegal, the Supreme Court should do the same.

The Supreme Court will decide in favor of the Trump Administration. To do otherwise would create chaos, defaulting immigration issues to un-elected judges. Someone has to be in charge.

Mr. Obama forced Mr. Stephanopoulos to read the definition of a "tax" while Mr. Obama argued that the mandate was not a tax. Were the Supreme Court to have considered this as evidence, the ACA mandate could have been held unconstitutional. Campaign statements must be kept separate from legal analysis or political opponents will attack every law. The Supreme Court has an excellent opportunity to overturn Korematsu and affirm the traditional understanding of executive power by upholding the travel ban.

The government's ability to screen people as undesirable was very different in 1942 from what it is today. The Koramatsu case, egregious as it was, was race-based and quite obviously easy to enforce ("they all look the same" to whitey - right?). Trump's ban is equally egregious, but has the benefit of being more difficult in that it is based upon belief rather than race. The idea of prior restraint has always been anathema in U.S. jurisprudence for good reason.

It's so perfectly telling of this president's character that he would cite one of the darkest and most shameful moments in America's history—and one entered into at a time when our nation faced an existential threat—as precedent for his illegal, unethical, and un-American war on immigrants—a war he embarks on not in the face of any threat, but rather motivated by hatred and anger.

The Japanese-American internment owed as much to what was a very racially "sensitive" America as it did to war hysteria. The Trump travel ban is as religiously oriented as it is nationally. Then again, both the dominant religion of the US and the majority of the nations listed are proselytizing religions with little acceptance of opposing views. Religion that proselytizes, considers its Way the only Way, its Truth the only Truth and that its duty to God is to impose that Way and Truth on Others can not be considered reasonable, or reasoning.

So, to accept the ban the court must accept that every statement coming out of the mouths of presidential candidates are not true, should be disregarded and hence all voters should disregard all statements made by their choice for president. OK, that seems to put us on the right path. I'm so looking forward to pre-indictment pardons. That'll take off, for sure.

The Roberts Court needs to exercise care. So far its Citizens United decision unleashed a torrent of money from billionaires and corporations when it redefined corporations as people and money as "free" speech and let the Kochs, Mercers, Adelson and others buy candidates and elections. It destroyed the Voting Rights Act unleashing voter suppression efforts including racist gerrymandering, limited voting hours and places. etc, that disenfranchised many minorities. In the Hobby Lobby decision it let bosses limit women's medical treatments and prescriptions within Insurance coverage that they were paying for themselves, based on their bosses' religious beliefs. Now Trump is moving to institutionalize racism and religious bigotry. This isn't just a slippery slope: it's black ice.

So two wrongs make a right ? Laughable, but consider the source. Next HE will be quoting the Dred Scott decision, when a case is about Voting Rights. Seriously.

The court will open Pandora’s Box if they agree that campaign statements from someone not holding any elective office can be used to assess actions they take when in office. Where would it stop? Should it also apply to members of Congress, local officials, judges! How about comments or Tweets office holders make to fund raisers, in interviews, to friends? How far back should one go...one year, ten, forever? Best to ignore it.

Ban all foreigners and be done with it. Not sure where all us white folks will go, but the Native Americans were here first and that's the long and short of it. Guess Trump can go back to Germany and as for me, Odessa here I come!

I understand opposition to Trump's travel ban. I don't agree with the opposition, but there is certainly a rational and reasonable case to be made against this policy. However, it's trivializing and ridiculous to compare prohibiting immigration from 6 failed states to FDR's internment of Japanese Americans. There's an obvious moral distinction between simply closing your borders to a certain group of foreigners, and rounding up people who are already here and interning them. If you can't appreciate the difference, that's because you've taken the simple-minded view that everything Trump does has to be rooted in, or comparable, to some historical evil. It seems Trump himself compared his plan to Roosevelt's, but it's unlikely he's really aware of what FDR's plan entailed. He thinks in a simple way: Roosevelt Democrat. Roosevelt ban people. I should compare myself to Roosevelt. I don't put much stock in it.

Having the opportunity for a historical perspective from WW2 in considering a current issue is a blessing. I hope we don't make the same mistake as was made in the past.

The 1952 statute granting the President the authority to suspend the entry of aliens into the United States can be found in Title 8, Section 1182 of the U.S. Code. Under it, the President may issue a proclamation to suspend the entry of “any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States [who] would be detrimental to the interests of the United States,” for as long as he deems necessary. The fact is the Travel Ban disproportionately impacts Muslims for no good reason. No evidence has been produced that shows that Muslims are per se "detrimental to the interests of the United States." Assuming arguendo that all "radical Islamists" are Muslim, it does not follow that all Muslims are "radical Islamists." Disproportionately excluding Muslims from entry into the United States, ergo, is an unjustifiable Muslim Ban, since as a "class of persons" Muslims are not per se any more detrimental to the interests of the United States than any other class of persons. “Guilt by association” is not a rational criterion for exclusion. Maurice F. Baggiano, Member of the Bar of the U.S. Supreme Court

The parallel is so strong on its face that I don't see how a responsible jurist can uphold Trump's order. We know what he meant by it -- to exclude Muslims, by and large, and from an arbitrary selection of countries. The entire order, every version, is like mass conviction without trial. (Responders, please don't say the people affected are not citizens of the U.S. I didn't say it *is*; I said it is *like* mass conviction without trial. Citizens or not, the U.S. is supposed to stand for fairness in justice. Excluding visitors or immigrants should live up to that ideal.)