Judge Ann Donnelly of the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn granted a request from the ACLU to stay deportations of those detained on entry to the United States following President Trump’s executive order.
And only minutes after the judge’s ruling in New York City, another came in Virginia when U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema issued a temporary restraining order to block the removal of any green card holders being detained at Dulles International Airport for seven days. Brinkema’s action also ordered that lawyers have access to those held there because of the president’s ban.
In Brooklyn, after a brief hearing in front of a small audience that filtered in from a crowd of hundreds outside, Donnelly determined that the risk of injury to those detained by being returned to their home countries necessitated the decision. She seemed to have little patience for the arguments presented by the government, which focused heavily on the fact that the two defendants named in the lawsuit had already been released. At one point, she visibly lost patience with a government attorney who was participating by phone.
Donnelly noted that those detained were suffering mostly from the bad fortune of traveling while the ban went into effect. “Our own government presumably approved their entry to the country,” she said at one point, noting that, had it been two days prior, those detained would have been granted admission without question.
