A federal judge in New York has ordered a stay on Donald Trump deportation order for people who have arrived in the US with valid visas from seven-majority Muslim nations.
As thousands of people joined demonstrations at airports across America to protest over Mr Trump’s immigration ban on Muslims, a judge ordered the stay and lawyers said the president’s actions were unconstitutional.
“I think the government hasn’t had a full chance to think about this,” judge Ann Donnelly told the court in Brooklyn, ordering the government to provide a list of names for people affected.
“Stay is national,” ACLU attorney Daniel Ho said on Twitter after the hearing.
As Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he would welcome any refugees turned away from the US, protesters at airports from San Francisco to Boston chanted and waved banners denouncing Mr Trump’s actions.
Probably the largest crowds were at New York’s JFK Airport, where at least 11 people were being detained. Anywhere up to a thousand people engulfed Terminal 4 on Saturday night, denouncing Mr Trump and insisting that the refugees be released.
Lawyers and advocates working at the airport said they did not have a hard count on the number of people taken into custody after getting off their flights.
Yosre Ghaled, 25, was among about a dozen distraught people waiting at an airport terminal Saturday to see if loved ones would be released, or put back on an outgoing plane.
Her mother-in-law’s sister, a 67-year-old Yemeni citizen coming to live with family in the US because she is sick from heart problems and diabetes, was detained after getting off a plane from Saudi Arabia.
“We’re very sad. She lives a very bad life. We try in her last days to (give her) a good life,” Ms Ghaled told the A
One protester at JFK, a woman who asked to be identified simply as Lucy, said she had come to protest, to let the world know what was happening.
“It’s important to call congressional and senate leaders and put pressure on them,” she told The Independent.
Griffen Gill, a 21-year-old student, said that that a lot of people may have voted for Mr Trump without expecting that he would enforce the ban.
“I don’t think he has any ideology. He was just hungry for power,” he said.
Nicholas Iossa, said: “I’ve come to represent American values. We have to that this back.”
