Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel joined the legal fight against the President Donald Trump's travel ban, along with the Mayors of Los Angeles, New York and Boston. They signed on to support the legal challenge by six states currently before a federal court in the Seattle.
Federal lawyers said on Tuesday in a court filing that Trump's revised travel ban is "substantially different" from the original and a judge should not apply a previous restraining order to the new version.
The Justice Department lawyers filed documents in the U.S. District Court in Seattle, just two days before the executive order is set to go into effect.
Washington and also several other states are trying to block the revised ban which affects six mostly Muslim nations.
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Government lawyers said that the new version removed provisions that "purportedly drew religious distinctions - erasing any doubt that national security, not religion, is the focus."
They made their filings with the Judge James Robart, who blocked the original ban in the last month. The Washington state wants him to apply that decision to the new order.
Trump's revised travel ban applies to Somalia, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya and Yemen and temporarily shuts down the U.S. refugee program. Unlike the original order, it said that the people with visas would not be affected.
The Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, joined in his lawsuit by heavily Democratic California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Oregon, said that the revised ban is still flawed and harms the residents, universities and businesses, especially tech companies such as the Washington state-based Microsoft and Amazon that rely on the foreign workers.
A hearing in a separate lawsuit by Hawaii is scheduled on Wednesday.
Mrudula Duddempudi.
