Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents defied the orders of federal judges regarding Donald Trump’s travel bans on Sunday, according to members of Congress and attorneys who rallied protests around the country in support of detained refugees and travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries.
On Sunday afternoon, four Democratic members of the House of Representatives arrived at Dulles airport in Virginia on word that people had been detained and denied access to lawyers.
“We have a constitutional crisis today,” representative Don Beyer wrote on Twitter. “Four members of Congress asked CBP officials to enforce a federal court order and were turned away.”
Representative Jamie Raskin, also at the airport, tweeted that the federal agency had given “no answers yet” about whether agents were ignoring the courts. Raskin joined several other attorneys there, including Damon Silvers, special counsel at AFL-CIO, one of the groups trying to help visa holders.
“As far as I know no attorney has been allowed to see any arriving passenger subject to Trumps exec order at Dulles today,” Silvers tweeted on Sunday evening. “CBP appears to be saying people in their custody not ‘detained’ technically & Dulles international arrivals areas not in the United States.”
No one responded to calls or emails with questions about the court orders at Dulles CBP or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the confusion played out in similar patterns at major airports around the country.
US travel ban - a brief guide
The executive order signed by Donald Trump suspends the entire US refugee admissions system, already one of the most rigorous in the world, for 120 days. It also suspends the Syrian refugee program indefinitely, and bans entry to the US to people from seven majority-Muslim countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen – for 90 days. The order has prompted a series of legal challenges, while thousands of Americans have protested outside airports and courthouses in solidarity with Muslims and migrants.
Late on Saturday night, federal judges in New York, Virginia and Massachusetts ordered a temporary halt to the president’s deportation of people who had arrived in the US with valid visas.
“Rogue customs and Border Patrol agents continue to try to get people on to planes,” Becca Heller, director of the International Refugee Assistance Project, told reporters on Sunday morning at JFK airport in New York. “A lot of people have been handcuffed, a lot of people who don’t speak English are being coerced into taking involuntary departures.”
The New York judge did not rule on whether Trump’s orders were constitutional, but her courtroom was packed with civil rights advocates and protesters who spilled out into the streets of Brooklyn, where thousands demonstrated.
At the height of protests at JFK on Saturday, about 5,000 protesters swarmed terminal four after an estimated 17 passengers, including green-card holders, were detained for hours. Travellers were released as Sunday wore on.
Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, posted on Twitter that homeland security secretary John Kelly had assured him the court order would be followed. “All those still in airports expected to be admitted,” Schumer tweeted. The DHS said in a statement that it would “enforce all of the president’s executive orders” but also that officials “will comply with judicial orders”.
In New York, though, lawyers described official resistance to requests for basic information on those being held.
“We continue to face border patrol’s noncompliance and chaos at airports around the country,” said Marielena Hincapie, director of the National Immigration Law Center. Officials, she said, were “kafkaesque” in their confused responses, adding that Trump’s order “has already caused irrevocable harm, it has already caused chaos”.
Heller said some border agents were trying to force detainees to surrender green cards, while other, “good Samaritan” agents were sympathetic to travellers, protesters and attorneys. “There is no method to this madness,” Heller said. She added that some agents had told attorneys: “Call Donald Trump.”
Lee Gelernt, the attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who argued in Brooklyn on Saturday night, said lawyers were trying to record incidents of noncompliance so they could go back to court. “The judge will certainly want to know if her orders are not being complied with,” he said. “Eventually you could get to something like contempt, but I think we’re a long way from that.”
Gelernt said that Saturday’s suits were the “first step” in a broader challenge to Trump’s orders. “We have to say no to discrimination based on religion.”
Authorities in Atlanta and Chicago had released some detainees, she added, while San Francisco and Los Angeles had only partially complied. It was not until late Sunday that DHS secretary John Kelly said his agency believed it to be “in the national interest” to allow lawful permanent residents to enter the country.
Heller said in one case, an Iranian Fulbright scholar, who did not give permission to use her name, had been forced on to an Air Ukraine flight at JFK – hours after agents had received the court order to stop.
“The flight started taxiing away from the gate,” Heller said. “She was on the phone with us and stood up and asked to get off the flight the crew just ignored her.” The attorneys made desperate calls to higher-level officials, and the plane was eventually turned around on the tarmac and the woman returned to detention.
Mitra Vardei, a friend of the student, said she had heard conflicting information. “She is going to be deported, then we hear there is a ban and she won’t be deported.”
An estimated 400 lawyers have signed up to represent detainees, and dozens flocked to airports, many with signs in Arabic and Farsi to alert relatives that attorneys could help them find lost loved ones. From Saturday into Sunday, hundreds attended rallies against Trump’s “extreme vetting order” at 29 cities and airports across the country. The ACLU reported $10m raised since Saturday and tens of thousands of new members.
Immigrant advocacy groups said the protests on Saturday that were staged at US airports were initially spontaneous, then coalesced through social media. The impromptu protests were followed by more formal efforts that, as in previous civil rights protests, had public and private companies articulating anti-government positions.
Republican leaders of Congress were relatively mute. Through a spokeswoman, House speaker Paul Ryan said he supported the ban and did not consider it a religious test. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who like Ryan criticized Trump’s plan for a Muslim ban while the businessman was a candidate, told ABC its legality should be left to the courts.