“Nobody is to be removed,” US District Judge Ann Donnelly told the government lawyers, issuing the stay after holding the first hearing on a challenge to the order.
In the order that followed, Donnelly barred federal officials from removing those with approved refugee applications, valid immigrant and non-immigrant visas, and individuals from the seven countries where all immigration was halted who are otherwise legally authorized to enter the US. Those seven countries are Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan, and Yemen.
Several hours later, after a late-night hearing in a federal courthouse in Massachusetts, US District Judge Allison Burroughs and Magistrate Judge Judith Dein issued an order early Sunday morning that — as the petitioners’ lawyers had requested — went further, barring federal officials from detaining, in addition to removing, the same group covered by Donnelly’s order and adding those same protections, explicitly, to lawful permanent residents.
Additionally, Burroughs and Dein’s order limits secondary screening to pre-Trump order status and order US Customs and Border Protection to “notify airlines that have flights arriving at Logan [International] Airport of this order and the fact that individuals on these flights will not be detained or returned solely on the basis of the Executive Order.”
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