Donald Trump’s latest travel ban blocked by judge hours before coming into effect

It was blocked by the same judge who had blocked a previous attempt to introduce a travel ban earlier this year.

An attempt by the Trump administration to implement a new travel ban on citizens entering the United States has been blocked by a district judge in Hawaii. According to The Guardian, Judge Derrick Watson granted Hawaii’s request to temporarily block the federal government from enforcing the ban, which was due to come into effect from midnight Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) on Wednesday. Watson is the judge who blocked an attempt to impose a travel ban restricting entry to the United States for people from a number of Muslim-majority countries back in March. Watson said in his ruling on Tuesday that said the state of Hawaii – who argued that the ban was a continuation of Trump’s “promise to exclude Muslims from the United States” – was likely to succeed in proving that the ban was in violation of federal immigration law. Judge Watson wrote that the latest ban “suffers from precisely the same maladies as its predecessor”. The latest travel ban, which was announced last month, attempted to impose restrictions on citizens of seven countries – Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and North Korea – and certain government officials from Venezuela entering the United States. President Trump initially signed an executive order earlier this year restricting travel to the United States for citizens from six Muslim-majority countries, an order that had been heavily revised by the Supreme Court.