(NY TIMES) – House Votes to Restrict Future Travel Bans, Moving to Undo Trump’s Legacy. The No Ban Act would curb the president’s expansive power to control immigration and bar restrictions on the basis of religion. It faces steep obstacles in the Senate.
Pamela Raghebi of Seattle blames President Donald J. Trump’s travel ban for keeping her separated from her husband, Afshin, a native of Iran, for three frustrating years.
“My world basically turned upside down,” Ms. Raghebi said on Wednesday in a phone interview, recalling how the blockade Mr. Trump imposed on travelers from predominantly Muslim countries had stranded her spouse overseas. “They scapegoated a whole culture throughout the world. That can’t be allowed to happen again.”
House Democrats moved on Wednesday to try to prevent that from happening. Voting 218 to 208, mostly along party lines, the House passed legislation known as the No Ban Act that would restrict the president’s wide-ranging power to control immigration by requiring that travel bans be temporary and subject to congressional oversight. It also would explicitly bar any such edict based on religion.
The House votes also approved, 217 to 207, entirely along party lines, a related measure that would require that certain immigrants be allowed access to a lawyer when they are detained at ports of entry, such as airports.
Republicans opposed both bills; just one of them, Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, crossed party lines to support the No Ban measure. They argued that controls on immigration should be tightened, not relaxed, given the crush of migration through the southwestern border.
“Are Democrats working to repair the crisis?” Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, asked on the House floor Wednesday. “Are they working to stop the mass flow of illegal migration? No.”
The bills face an uncertain future in an evenly split Senate, where a backlog of House-passed bills on immigration and other topics face steep obstacles. But advocates say they send a clear message that America cannot go back to the days of Mr. Trump, who called during his presidential campaign for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” and then strove to put those words into action once he took office.
“We cannot allow any president to abuse the power of his or her office,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on the floor.