President Donald Trump revealed earlier this month that his team will not bother to keep fighting the February court ruling that suspended his temporary ban on refugees and travel from seven majority-Muslim countries—a move that sent international airports spiraling into chaos and mobilized protesters and lawyers in travelers' defense. Instead, Trump's team is planning to release a new order.
Travel Ban 2.0 is still under wraps, but White House adviser Stephen Miller made a Fox News appearance on Tuesday to assure a town hall gathering of Trump voters that the new version will be "fundamentally" the same as the old one, albeit "responsive to the judicial ruling."
"Fundamentally, you're still going to have the same basic policy outcome for the country," Miller said. "But you're going to be responsive to a lot of very technical issues that were brought up by the court."
Details, beyond this broad assurance, are thin—Miller spent the majority of the segment dismissing the "flawed" judicial order, and maintaining that "nothing was wrong with the first executive order."
Anchor Martha MacCallum picked gently at this logic, to no avail. "I know you think the order was fine the way it was ordered initially," she said. "But 48 courts took issue with it, and that's why it's halted right now, as a result of that process that happens in this country."
Miller stuck to his "minor technical differences" refrain. (Fox has a report on the new ban, citing an anonymous White House official, which outlines a ban targeting the same seven countries, albeit with exceptions for all green card holders and American dual citizens.)
A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier this month that the President does not have "unreviewable authority" to bar entry from the country—an opinion Miller and his crew maintain.
"There is no precedent to support this claimed unreviewability," the decision reads, "which runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy."
More details are expected this week, which means a draft will probably be leaked any minute now.
In the meantime, New York Immigration Coalition attorney Camille Mackler, a lead organizer of the #NoBanJFK emergency legal services center, told Gothamist this week that the team is prepared to return to the airport at a moment's notice.
"We need to figure out—and we're getting there—how to pivot and respond very, very fast," she said.
