With just hours before the Travel Ban 2.0 was set to take effect, federal judge Derrick Kahala Watson in Honolulu halted it nationwide by issuing a temporary restraining order to the listed plaintiffs: the State of Hawaii and Ismail Elshikh.
You heard a lot about Hawaii, but not much about Elshikh in most of the news reports.
Elshikh was critical to the important issue of standing to file the lawsuit.
Hawaii's claims were similar to the state of Washington's in the suit that stalled the first travel ban. Like Washington, Hawaii's universities would suffer monetary harms, as would the state as a whole--especially its important tourism industry.
But Elshikh was the named human face in this suit.
Read more at http://aaldef.org/blog/emil-guillermo-thanks-to-hawaii-and-ismail-elshikh-travel-ban-20-blocked-for-now.html Also important was the anti-Muslim rhetoric of Trump during the campaign, which the judge noted as indicative of the travel ban's real motive. Maybe the administration will learn that even a "watered down" version of Islamophobia is still Islamophobia and no way to fight terrorism. That's especially true when the hateful rhetoric inspires hateful actions as it did in Olathe, Kansas recently. I play an interview I did with Jenn Fang just days after the murder of Srinivas Kuchibhotla. We talk about the president's reaction, how the Vincent Chin case compares, and why Asian Americans should care about Islamophobia. See the SAALT report here: http://aaldef.org/blog/emil-guillermo-is-srinivas-kuchibhotla-the-vincent-chin-for-south-asians.html Emil Guillermo is a veteran journalist, columnist, commentator, broadcaster, and talk host. See all my blog posts at http:/www.aaldef.org/blog and at http://www.amok.com Thanks for listening to Emil Amok's Takeout. http://www.aaldef.org/blog
