Tag Archives: National Security

Pakistan summons U.S. ambassador after Trump’s angry tweet

David Hale, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, speaks at the Pakistan Stock Exchange in Karachi, Pakistan, July 26, 2016.

By Drazen Jorgic

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan has summoned the U.S. ambassador to protest against U.S. President Donald Trump’s angry tweet about Pakistani “lies and deceit”, which Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif dismissed as a political stunt.

David Hale was summoned by the Pakistan foreign office on Monday to explain Trump’s tweet, media said. The ministry could not be reached for comment but the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad confirmed on Tuesday that a meeting had taken place.

Trump said the United States had had been rewarded with “nothing but lies and deceit” for “foolishly” giving Pakistan more than $33 billion in aid in the last 15 years.

“They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!” he tweeted on Monday.

His words drew praise from Pakistan’s old foe, India, and neighboring Afghanistan, but long-time ally China defended Pakistan.

Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Tuesday chaired a National Security Committee meeting of civilian and military chiefs, focusing on Trump’s tweet. The meeting, which lasted nearly three hours, was brought forward by a day and followed an earlier meeting of army generals.

Relations with Washington have been strained for years over Islamabad’s alleged support for Haqqani network militants, who are allied with the Afghan Taliban.

The United States also alleges that senior Afghan Taliban commanders live on Pakistani soil, and has signaled that it will cut aid and take other steps if Islamabad does not stop helping or turning a blind eye to Haqqani militants crossing the border to carry out attacks in Afghanistan.

In 2016, Taliban leader Mullah Mansour was killed by a U.S. drone strike inside Pakistan and in 2011, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was found and killed by U.S. troops in the garrison town of Abbottabad.

Islamabad bristles at the suggestion that it is not doing enough to fight Islamist militants, noting that its casualties at the hands of Islamists since 2001 number in the tens of thousands.

“DEAD-END STREET”

Foreign Minister Asif dismissed Trump’s comments as a political stunt born out of frustration over U.S. failures in Afghanistan, where Afghan Taliban militants have been gaining territory and carrying out major attacks.

“He has tweeted against us and Iran for his domestic consumption,” Asif told Geo TV on Monday.

“He is again and again displacing his frustrations on Pakistan over failures in Afghanistan as they are trapped in dead-end street in Afghanistan.”

Asif added that Pakistan did not need U.S. aid.

A U.S. National Security Council official on Monday said the White House did not plan to send an already-delayed $255 million in aid to Pakistan “at this time” and that “the administration continues to review Pakistan’s level of cooperation”.

Afghan defense spokesman General Dawlat Waziri said Trump had “declared the reality”, adding that “Pakistan has never helped or participated in tackling terrorism”.

Jitendra Singh, a junior minister at the Indian prime minister’s office, said Trump’s comment had “vindicated India’s stand as far as terror is concerned and as far as Pakistan’s role in perpetrating terrorism is concerned”.

But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang, asked during a briefing about Trump’s tweet, did not mention the United States.

“We have said many times that Pakistan has put forth great effort and made great sacrifices in combating terrorism,” he said. “It has made a prominent contribution to global anti-terror efforts.”

Pakistani officials say tough U.S. measures threaten to push Pakistan further into the arms of China, which has pledged to invest $57 billion in Pakistani infrastructure as part of its vast Belt and Road initiative.

(Reporting by Drazen Jorgic in ISLAMABAD, Syed Raza Hassan in KARACHI, Malini Menon in NEW DELHI, Mirwais Harooni in KABUL; Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

IBM urged to avoid working on ‘extreme vetting’ of U.S. immigrants

IBM urged to avoid working on 'extreme vetting' of U.S. immigrants

By Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A coalition of rights groups launched an online petition on Thursday urging IBM Corp to declare that it will not develop technology to help the Trump administration carry out a proposal to identify people for visa denial and deportation from the United States.

IBM and several other technology companies and contractors, including Booz Allen Hamilton, LexisNexis and Deloitte [DLTE.UL], attended a July informational session hosted by immigration enforcement officials that discussed developing technology for vetting immigrants, said Steven Renderos, organizing director at petitioner the Center for Media Justice.

President Donald Trump has pledged to harden screening procedures for people looking to enter the country, and also called for “extreme vetting” of certain immigrants to ensure they are contributing to society, saying such steps are necessary to protect national security and curtail illegal immigration.

The rights group said the proposals run counter to IBM’s stated goals of protecting so-called “Dreamer” immigrants from deportation.

Asked about the petition and whether it planned to work to help vet and deport immigrants, an IBM spokeswoman said the company “would not work on any project that runs counter to our company’s values, including our long-standing opposition to discrimination against anyone on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation or religion.”

The petition is tied to a broader advocacy campaign, also begun Thursday, that objects to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Extreme Vetting Initiative.

In an Oct. 5 email seen by Reuters, Christopher Padilla, IBM’s vice president of government affairs, cited the company’s opposition to discrimination in response to an inquiry about the vetting program from the nonprofit group Open Mic.

Padilla said the meeting IBM attended was only informational and it was “premature to speculate” whether the company would pursue business related to the Extreme Vetting Initiative.

Booz Allen Hamilton, LexisNexis and Deloitte did not immediately respond when asked about the campaign, which also highlighted their attendance at the July meeting.

ICE wants to use machine learning technology and social media monitoring to determine whether an individual is a “positively contributing member of society,” according to documents published on federal contracting websites.

More than 50 civil society groups and more than 50 technical experts sent separate letters on Thursday to the Department of Homeland Security saying the vetting program as described was “tailor-made for discrimination” and contending artificial intelligence was unable to provide the information ICE desired.

Opponents of Trump’s policies ranging from immigration to trade have been pressuring IBM and other technology companies to avoid working on proposals in these areas from the Republican president’s administration.

Shortly after the presidential election last year, for example, several internet firms pledged that they would not help Trump build a data registry to track people based on their religion or assist in mass deportations.

IBM is among dozens of technology companies to join a legal briefing opposing Trump’s decision to end the “Dreamer” program that protects from deportation about 900,000 immigrants brought illegally into the United States as children.

“While on the one hand they’ve expressed their support for Dreamers, they’re also considering building a platform that would make it easier to deport them,” Renderos said.

CREDO, Daily Kos, and Color of Change also organized the petition.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz in Washington, additional reporting by Salvador Rodriguez in San Francisco, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien and David Gregorio)

U.S. attorney general ties gang violence to immigration

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks on the growing trend of violent crime in sanctuary cities during an event on the Port of Miami in Miami, Florida, U.S. on, August 16, 2017. REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) – Protesters gathered outside a federal court in Boston on Thursday where U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions came to address law enforcement about what he called the need to tackle transnational gang violence and to secure the Mexican border.

Sessions reemphasized what he said was a need to target cross-border criminal organizations, specifically the gang MS-13, which the Justice Department says has more than 30,000 members worldwide and 10,000 members in the United States.

Tying the effort to fight the gang and Republican President Donald Trump’s administration’s efforts to crackdown on illegal immigration, Sessions said the Justice Department was directing more prosecutorial resources to the U.S.-Mexican border.

He also made an apparent reference to Trump’s campaign promise to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, saying such a wall would help protect against gang members who are smuggled across it.

“Securing our border, both through a physical wall and with brave men and women of the border patrol restoring an orderly and lawful system of immigration, is part and parcel of any successful crime fighting, gang fighting strategy,” he said.

He also said the Trump administration was examining the “exploitation” of a program that helps unaccompanied refugee minors by gang members using it to “come to this country as wolves in sheep clothing” and to recruit new members.

Outside the courthouse, around 40 people gathered in a protest organized by the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, holding signs saying “Jeff: Go Home” and “Racism is #Notwelcome.”

MS-13, also called La Mara Salvatrucha, has taken root in the United States in Los Angeles in the 1980s in neighborhoods populated with immigrants from El Salvador who had fled its civil war.

In Boston, federal prosecutors have since January 2016 brought racketeering, drug trafficking, weapons and other charges against 61 people linked to MS-13 in Massachusetts including leaders, members and associates of the gang.

 

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by Diane Craft)

 

California to file lawsuit over Trump border wall

A view of a section of the U.S.-Mexico border fence at El Paso, U.S. opposite the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico February 2, 2017. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez

By Dan Levine

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – California’s attorney general plans to file a lawsuit on Wednesday challenging President Donald Trump’s plan to construct a wall along the border with Mexico, the state AG’s office said, adding to the obstacles facing a key Trump campaign promise.

Trump has insisted Mexico would pay for building the wall, which experts said could cost about $22 billion and take more than three years to complete.

With Mexico refusing to pay, Trump has said since taking office in January that the wall will initially need U.S. funding but that he will find a way to make Mexico ultimately pay for it.

Democrats in the U.S. Congress, however, firmly oppose the border wall, and at least some Democratic senators would need to vote for its inclusion in a spending package.

Democratic attorneys general including California’s Xavier Becerra have sued the Trump administration on a range of issues.

The border wall lawsuit set to be filed on Wednesday will allege that Trump’s wall violates federal environmental standards, as well as constitutional provisions regarding the separation of powers and states’ rights, a Becerra spokesperson said.

Last month the Trump administration said it had selected four construction companies to build concrete prototypes for a wall, which will be will be 30 feet (9 meters) tall and about 30 feet wide and will be tested in San Diego.

(Reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Trump to present vision for U.S. strategy in Afghanistan war

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Army soldiers from the 2nd Platoon, B battery 2-8 field artillery, fire a howitzer artillery piece at Seprwan Ghar forward fire base in Panjwai district, Kandahar province southern Afghanistan, June 12, 2011.

By Steve Holland and John Walcott

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – It will be President Donald Trump’s turn on Monday to address a problem that vexed his two predecessors when he details his strategy for the war in Afghanistan, America’s longest military conflict.

In a prime-time speech to the nation, Trump may announce a modest increase in U.S. troops, as recommended by his senior advisers.

Trump has long been skeptical of the U.S. approach in the region, where the Afghan war is in its 16th year.

He announced a strategic review soon after taking office in January and has privately questioned whether sending more troops was wise, U.S. officials said.

“We’re not winning,” he told advisers in a mid-July meeting, questioning whether Army General John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, should be fired, an official said.

Trump, who on Sunday ended a two-week working vacation at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, reached his decision on Afghanistan after lengthy talks with his top military and national security aides at Camp David, Maryland, on Friday.

A White House statement on Sunday said Trump would “provide an update on the path forward for America’s engagement in Afghanistan and South Asia.”

A senior administration official said the likeliest outcome was that Trump would agree to a modest increase in U.S. troops. Current U.S. troop numbers are about 8,400.

The United States invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, and overthrew the Islamist Taliban government. But U.S. forces have remained bogged down there through the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and now Trump.

“I took over a mess, and we’re going to make it a lot less messy,” Trump said when asked about Afghanistan earlier this month.

 

TALIBAN THREAT

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has argued that a U.S. military presence is needed to protect against the ongoing threat from Islamist militants.

Afghan security forces have struggled to prevent advances by Taliban insurgents. The war stymied the Obama administration, which committed an increase of tens of thousands of U.S. troops to reverse Taliban gains, then committed to a troop drawdown, which ultimately had to be halted.

Earlier this year, Trump gave Mattis the authority to set troop levels in Afghanistan, opening the door for future troop increases requested by Nicholson. The general, who leads U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, said in February he needed “a few thousand” additional forces, some potentially drawn from U.S. allies.

U.S. military and intelligence officials are concerned that a Taliban victory would allow al Qaeda and Islamic State’s regional affiliate to establish bases in Afghanistan from which to plot attacks against the United States and its allies.

One reason the White House decision has taken so long, two officials who participated in the discussions said on Sunday, is that it was difficult to get Trump to accept the need for a broader regional strategy that included U.S. policy toward Pakistan before making a decision on whether to send additional forces to Afghanistan.

Both officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to disclose Trump’s decisions on troop levels and Pakistan policy before he does.

The difficulty in reaching a decision was compounded, the two officials said, by the wide range of conflicting options Trump received.

White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster and other advisers favored accepting Nicholson’s request for some 4,000 additional U.S. forces.

But recently ousted White House strategic adviser Steve Bannon had argued for the withdrawal of all U.S. forces, saying that after 16 years, the war was still not winnable, U.S. officials said. Bannon, fired on Friday by Trump, was not at the Camp David meeting.

The officials said that another option examined was shrinking the U.S. force by some 3,000 troops and leaving a smaller counterterrorism and intelligence-gathering contingent to carry out special operations and direct drone strikes against the Taliban.

Proponents argued that option was less costly in lives and money and would add less to the damage already inflicted on U.S. special operations forces by the long-running battles in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Syria.

 

 

(Additional reporting by Idrees Ali traveling with Mattis in Amman; Writing by James Oliphant; Editing Peter Cooney.)

 

U.S. Supreme Court breathes new life into Trump’s travel ban

People walk outside the the U.S. Supreme Court building after the Court granted parts of the Trump administration's emergency request to put his travel ban into effect immediately while the legal battle continues, in Washington, U.S., June 26, 2017

By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to President Donald Trump by reviving parts of a travel ban on people from six Muslim-majority countries that he said is needed for national security but that opponents decry as discriminatory.

The justices narrowed the scope of lower court rulings that had completely blocked key parts of a March 6 executive order that Trump had said was needed to prevent terrorism in the United States, allowing his temporary ban to go into effect for people with no strong ties such as family or business to the United States. [http://tmsnrt.rs/2seb3bb]

The court issued its order on the last day of its current term and agreed to hear oral arguments during its next term starting in October so it can decide finally whether the ban is lawful in a major test of presidential powers.

In a statement, Trump called the high court’s action “a clear victory for our national security,” saying the justices allowed the travel suspension to become largely effective.

“As president, I cannot allow people into our country who want to do us harm. I want people who can love the United States and all of its citizens, and who will be hardworking and productive,” Trump added.

Trump’s March 6 order called for a blanket 90-day ban on people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen and a 120-day ban on all refugees while the government implemented stronger vetting procedures. The court allowed a limited version of the refugee ban, which had also been blocked by courts, to go into effect.

Trump issued the order amid rising international concern about attacks carried out by Islamist militants like those in Paris, London, Brussels, Berlin and other cities. But challengers said no one from the affected countries had carried out attacks in the United States.

Federal courts said the travel ban violated federal immigration law and was discriminatory against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Critics called it a discriminatory “Muslim ban.”

Ahmed al-Nasi, an official in Yemen’s Ministry of Expatriate Affairs, voiced disappointment.

“We believe it will not help in confronting terrorism and extremism, but rather will increase the feeling among the nationals of these countries that they are all being targeted, especially given that Yemen is an active partner of the United States in the war on terrorism and that there are joint operations against terrorist elements in Yemen,” he said.

Groups that challenged the ban, including the American Civil Liberties Union, said that most people from the affected countries seeking entry to the United States would have the required connections. But they voiced concern the administration would interpret the ban as broadly as it could.

“It’s going to be very important for us over this intervening period to make sure the government abides by the terms of the order and does not try to use it as a back door into implementing the full-scale Muslim ban that it’s been seeking to implement,” said Omar Jadwat, an ACLU lawyer.

During the 2016 presidential race, Trump campaigned for “a total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States. The travel ban was a signature policy of Trump’s first few months as president.

‘BONA FIDE RELATIONSHIP’

In an unusual unsigned decision, the Supreme Court on Monday said the travel ban will go into effect “with respect to foreign nationals who lack any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”

A lack of a clearly defined relationship would bar from entry people from the six countries and refugees with no such ties.

Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin, who successfully challenged the ban in lower courts, said that students from affected countries due to attend the University of Hawaii would still be able to do so.

Both bans were to partly go into effect 72 hours after the court’s decision. The Department of Homeland Security promised clear and sufficient public notice in coordination with the travel industry.

Trump signed the order as a replacement for a Jan. 27 one issued a week after he became president that also was blocked by federal courts, but not before it caused chaos at airports and provoked numerous protests.

Even before the Supreme Court action the ban applied only to new visa applicants, not people who already have visas or are U.S. permanent residents, known as green card holders. The executive order also made waivers available for a foreign national seeking to enter the United States to resume work or study, visit a spouse, child or parent who is a U.S. citizen, or for “significant business or professional obligations.” Refugees “in transit” and already approved would have been able to travel to the United States under the executive order.

A CONSERVATIVE COURT

The case was Trump’s first major challenge at the Supreme Court, where he restored a 5-4 conservative majority with the appointment of Neil Gorsuch, who joined the bench in April. There are five Republican appointees on the court and four Democratic appointees. The four liberal justices were silent.

Gorsuch was one of the three conservative justices who would have granted Trump’s request to put the order completely into effect. Fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion in which he warned that requiring officials to differentiate between foreigners who have a connection to the United States and those who do not will prove unworkable.

“Today’s compromise will burden executive officials with the task of deciding – on peril of contempt – whether individuals from the six affected nations who wish to enter the United States have a sufficient connection to a person or entity in this country,” Thomas wrote.

The state of Hawaii and a group of plaintiffs in Maryland represented by the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the order violated federal immigration law and the Constitution’s First Amendment prohibition on the government favoring or disfavoring any particular religion. Regional federal appeals courts in Virginia and California both upheld district judge injunctions blocking the order.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley. Additional reporting by Andrew Chung and Yeganeh Torbati in Washington and Mohammed Ghobari in Sanaa, Yemen; Editing by Will Dunham and Howard Goller)

North Korea ‘most urgent’ threat to security: Mattis

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis arrives for a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the Pentagon's budget priorities on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 12, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

By Idrees Ali and Mike Stone

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Monday that North Korea’s advancing missile and nuclear programs were the “most urgent” threat to national security and that its means to deliver them had increased in speed and scope.

“The regime’s nuclear weapons program is a clear and present danger to all, and the regime’s provocative actions, manifestly illegal under international law, have not abated despite United Nations’ censure and sanctions,” Mattis said in a written statement to the House Armed Services Committee.

“The most urgent and dangerous threat to peace and security is North Korea,” the statement added. “North Korea’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them has increased in pace and scope.”

Earlier this month, the U.N. Security Council expanded targeted sanctions against North Korea after its repeated missile tests, adopting the first such resolution agreed by the United States and China since President Donald Trump took office.

The U.S. focus on North Korea has been sharpened by dozens of North Korean missile launches and two nuclear bomb tests since the beginning of last year and by Pyongyang’s vow to develop a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland.

Mattis, speaking before the panel, warned of the potential losses in the case of conflict with North Korea.

“It would be a war like nothing we have seen since 1953 and we would have to deal with it with whatever level of force was necessary … It would be a very, very serious war,” Mattis said.

The Korean War ended in 1953, three years after fighting began in a conflict that would kill 140,000 South Koreans, 36,000 U.S. soldiers and 1 million civilians.

South Korea’s top national security adviser said last week that Seoul did not aim to change its agreement on the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system to protect against North Korea, despite a decision to delay its full installation.

Chung Eui-yong called the decision to delay installation of remaining launchers of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system, pending a review of its environmental impact, a domestic measure to ensure a democratic process.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Peter Cooney and Stephen Coates)

Trump administration approves tougher visa vetting, including social media checks

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection arm patch and badge

By Yeganeh Torbati

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration has rolled out a new questionnaire for U.S. visa applicants worldwide that asks for social media handles for the last five years and biographical information going back 15 years.

The new questions, part of an effort to tighten vetting of would-be visitors to the United States, was approved on May 23 by the Office of Management and Budget despite criticism from a range of education officials and academic groups during a public comment period.

Critics argued that the new questions would be overly burdensome, lead to long delays in processing and discourage international students and scientists from coming to the United States.

Under the new procedures, consular officials can request all prior passport numbers, five years’ worth of social media handles, email addresses and phone numbers and 15 years of biographical information including addresses, employment and travel history.

Officials will request the additional information when they determine “that such information is required to confirm identity or conduct more rigorous national security vetting,” a State Department official said on Wednesday.

The State Department said earlier the tighter vetting would apply to visa applicants “who have been determined to warrant additional scrutiny in connection with terrorism or other national security-related visa ineligibilities.”

President Donald Trump has vowed to increase national security and border protections, proposing to give more money to the military and make Mexico pay to build a wall along the southern U.S. border.

He has tried to implement a temporary travel ban on people from six Muslim-majority nations that a U.S. appeals court refused to reinstate, calling it discriminatory and setting the stage for a showdown in the Supreme Court.

The Office of Management and Budget granted emergency approval for the new questions for six months, rather than the usual three years.

While the new questions are voluntary, the form says failure to provide the information may delay or prevent the processing of an individual visa application.

Immigration lawyers and advocates say the request for 15 years of detailed biographical information, as well as the expectation that applicants remember all their social media handles, is likely to catch applicants who make innocent mistakes or do not remember all the information requested.

The new questions grant “arbitrary power” to consular officials to determine who gets a visa with no effective check on their decisions, said Babak Yousefzadeh, a San Francisco-based attorney and president of the Iranian American Bar Association.

“The United States has one of the most stringent visa application processes in the world,” Yousefzadeh said. “The need for tightening the application process further is really unknown and unclear.”

(Editing by Sue Horton and Lisa Shumaker)

Judges hit Trump lawyer with tough questions over revised travel ban

FILE PHOTO: A member of the Al Murisi family, Yemeni nationals who were denied entry into the U.S. last week because of the recent travel ban, shows the cancelled visa in their passport from their failed entry to reporters as they successfully arrive to be reunited with their family at Washington Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Virginia, U.S. February 6, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

By Lawrence Hurley

RICHMOND, Va. (Reuters) – Federal appeals court judges on Monday peppered a U.S. Justice Department lawyer with tough questions about President Donald Trump’s temporary ban on travelers from six Muslim-majority nations, with several voicing skepticism that protecting national security was the aim of the policy, not religious bias.

Six Democratic appointees on a court dominated by judges named by Democratic presidents showed concerns about reviving the Republican president’s March executive order that prohibited new visas to enter the United States for citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for three months.

But three Republican appointees on the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seemed to lean toward the administration, asking whether the president should be second-guessed when it comes to protecting the country’s borders and whether the plaintiffs bringing the suit had been sufficiently harmed by the order during arguments before 13 judges.

Based on the judges’ questions, a ruling could hinge on whether the appeals court agrees with a lower court judge that past statements by Trump about the need to prevent Muslims from entering the United States should be taken into account. That would be bad news for a young administration seeking victory on one of its first policy changes.

“This is not a Muslim ban,” Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, arguing for the government, told the judges during the hearing that lasted two hours, twice as long as scheduled.

Judge Robert King, named by Democratic former President Bill Clinton, told Wall that Trump has never retracted previous comments about wanting to impose a ban on Muslims.

“He’s never repudiated what he said about the Muslim ban,” King said, referring to Trump’s campaign promise for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

POLITICAL DEBATE

Wall told the judges past legal precedent holds that the court should not look behind the text of the Trump’s executive order, which does not mention any specific religion, to get at its motivations. He warned that despite the “heated and passionate political debate” about the ban, there was a need to be careful not to set legal precedent that would open the door to broader questioning of presidential decision making on security matters.

Judge Paul Niemeyer, appointed by Republican former President George H.W. Bush, told Omar Jadwat, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer representing the plaintiffs who challenged the order, that they were asking the court to rule on a president’s national security judgments.

“You have the judiciary supervising and assessing how the executive is carrying out his office,” Niemeyer said, pressing Jadwat, who seemed to stumble at times after pointed questioning by the judges. “I just don’t know where this stops.”

The revised travel ban was challenged in Maryland by refugee organizations and individuals who said they were being discriminated against because they were Muslim and because they had family members adversely affected by the ban. They argue the order violated federal immigration law and a section of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment barring the government from favoring or disfavoring a particular religion.

The administration appealed a March 15 ruling by Maryland-based federal judge Theodore Chuang that put the ban on hold just a day before it was due to go into effect.

The arguments marked the latest legal test for Trump’s ban, which also was blocked by federal judge Derrick Watson in Hawaii in a separate legal challenge. An earlier version of the ban was also blocked by the courts.

Chuang, in Maryland, blocked the part of Trump’s order relating to travel by people from the six countries. Watson, in Hawaii, also blocked another part of the order that suspended the entry of refugees into the United States for four months.

‘HOW IS THIS NEUTRAL?’

To a packed audience in the ornate pre-Civil War era courthouse, Judge Pamela Harris said Trump’s action clearly had a disparate impact on Muslims, asking, “How is this neutral in its operation as to Muslims?” Judge Barbara Keenan, who like Harris was appointed by Democratic former President Barack Obama, said the order could affect some 200 million people.

Regardless of how the 13 judges rule, the matter is likely to be decided ultimately by the U.S. Supreme Court. The full 4th Circuit took up the appeal but two Republican-appointed judges did not participate. That left nine judges appointed by Democratic presidents, three Republican appointees and one judge originally appointed by a Democrat and later re-appointed by a Republican.

It was unclear when the court would rule.

Trump issued the March executive order after federal courts blocked an earlier version, issued on Jan. 27 a week after he took office, that also had included Iraq among the nations targeted. That order, which went into effect immediately, triggered chaos and protests at airports and in several cities before being put on hold due to legal challenges.

The second order was intended to overcome the legal problems posed by the original ban.

The administration’s appeal in the Hawaii case will be heard in Seattle on May 15 by a three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The three judges assigned all are Democratic appointees.

Wall said the temporary ban was intended to give the government time to evaluate whether people from the six countries were being subjected to adequate vetting to ensure they did not pose a security threat to the United States.

But he said the administration had not been able to proceed on all the work it wanted to do because of the litigation, noting “we have put our pens down.”

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York and Dan Levine in San Francisco; Editing by Will Dunham and Mary Milliken)

U.N. rights boss says Egypt crackdown ‘facilitates radicalization’

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein of Jordan speaks during a news conference at the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland,

CAIRO (Reuters) – U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said on Monday that heavy-handed security measures by Egypt were fostering the very radicalization it was looking to curb.

Egypt last month was shaken by one of the bloodiest attacks in years when Islamic State suicide bombers targeted two Christian churches, killing 45 and marking the latest assault on a religious minority increasingly targeted by Islamist militants.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared a three-month state of emergency just hours after the attacks.

Zein condemned the church attacks at a news conference in Geneva but said that Egypt’s approach to combating Islamist militants was exacerbating the problem.

“…a state of emergency, the massive numbers of detentions, reports of torture, and continued arbitrary arrests – all of this we believe facilitates radicalization in prisons,” Zeid said.

“…And abetted by the crackdown on civil society through travel bans, freezing orders, anti-protest laws, this is in our opinion is not the way to fight terror.”

Sisi, elected in 2014 in part on a pledge to restore stability to a country hit by years of turmoil since its 2011 uprising, has sought to present himself as an indispensable bulwark against terrorism in the Middle East.

Rights groups, however, say they face the worst crackdown in their history.

“National security yes, must be a priority for every country, but again not at the expense of human rights,” said Zeid.

(This version of the story has been refiled to correct spelling of Zeid in paragraph 4)

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Writing by Eric Knecht)