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High Energy Jazz From the Funky Knuckles: "New Birth"

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mmmirele2/03/2017 5:59:50 pm PST

Just got here, I don’t think this has gotten posted yet:

Trump officials slow-walked court orders on travel ban

Customs officials blocked immigrants from seeing lawyers at Dulles Airport, despite judge’s order.

Hours after a federal judge ordered customs officers to provide lawyers to travelers detained at Dulles airport last Saturday, senior Trump administration officials instructed the guards to give the travelers phone numbers of legal services organizations, ignoring a mass of lawyers who had gathered at the airport.

Most of the legal services offices were closed for the weekend, effectively preventing travelers with green cards from obtaining legal advice.

The move was part of what lawyers contend was a series of foot-dragging actions by the administration that appeared to violate court orders against the Trump’s controversial travel ban.

A little over 24 hours after Trump ordered the ban, federal judges in New York, Massachusetts and Virginia issued emergency rulings blocking parts of it. But at Dulles and other airports, customs officers refused to change their procedures until their superiors conveyed instructions from agency lawyers reviewing the court decisions, according to three lawyers familiar with the situation and a congressional staff member investigating the matter.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, at least four hours after the first of the court orders came down, Todd Owen, Customs and Border Protection’s executive assistant commissioner, convened a conference call for field operations to deliver new guidance, according to a person briefed on the call.

But rather than allow the detained travelers to contact lawyers waiting to serve them, Owen’s team advised CBP officers at Dulles to give the travelers phone numbers for legal-services organizations.

politico.com

The judge in this case is Leonie Brinkema. She’s been a federal judge since the early 1990s. I don’t think she’s going to be too especially thrilled with the CBP. And she shouldn’t be.