His Name Is Omar Jadwat, and He’s the ACLU Lawyer Arguing Against the Muslim Ban. Here’s What He Has to Say About It.
On January 27, when President Trump issued an executive order banning people from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S., Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, did not expect that the administration would be so eager to implement it that officials would detain and attempt to deport people who had been in the air, heading to the United States, when it was signed. But that’s what happened. Jadwat and his team worked through the night, together with lawyers and law students at the National Immigration Law Center and the International Refugee Assistance Project and the Workers and Immigrants Rights Advocacy Clinic at Yale Law School, to file a lawsuit on behalf of two detained Iraqi men and others in the same situation.
With at least a thousand people assembled in front of the federal courthouse in Brooklyn to protest the travel ban, the ACLU and its partners secured a court order blocking the deportation of all people stranded in U.S. airports, nationwide.
A federal court in Washington soon issued an order blocking the January ban order even more broadly. After losing a round in the court of appeals, the president issued a revised executive order — sometimes referred to as Muslim Ban 2.0 — that has itself been swiftly blocked by federal courts in Hawai‘i and Maryland.
On Monday, Jadwat will be in court in Richmond, VA, arguing against the government’s appeal of the Maryland district court’s decision in International Refugee Assistance Project v. Trump. This will be the first argument in a federal court of appeals about Muslim Ban 2.0.
The argument takes place 2:30 p.m., Monday, May 8, at , Richmond, Virginia, and will be .
Below is a slightly edited version of our conversation.
Q: Why is your argument in the Fourth Circuit on Monday, May 8, so important?
It’s the first appellate argument on whether the current version of the Muslim ban is lawful and constitutional. It could determine whether the Muslim ban — which is an unprecedented violation of the fundamental Constitutional principle that the government may not disfavor any particular religion — will be able to go forward at all.
It’s a critical moment for the courts. The government’s asking that the courts blind themselves to the facts in this case and allow the ban to go forward even though the President has made absolutely clear that he wanted to target Muslims. It would be disastrous to go down that road.
Q: How do you feel personally invested in this case? Does it mean something to you personally?
It means a lot to me personally. The Constitution’s commitments to equality, including religious equality, protect all of us in our daily lives.
The possibility that the president might be able to go forward with something like this would affect my family, my community — lots of people I care about — in a very direct way.
I’ve personally seen how, for my Muslim family members overseas, the ability to come to the United States, be treated fairly and decently in the process, and experience our pluralistic, multicultural society, does a lot to counteract anti-American propaganda. The idea we would take away this powerful and important example of religious tolerance and replace it with an unjustifiable form of discrimination is something that honestly worries me.
Q: How does it feel to be at the center of something that so many people are interested in? How do you handle the pressure?
I’m really glad so many people are interested in this, and, more importantly, they’re interested in it for really good and important reasons. My experience has been that once you’re actually up there and doing your argument you focus entirely on what’s going on in the room, and no amount of external interest makes a difference on the day because you’re so focused on the task at hand.
There’s no question the stakes are high in this case and that causes some pressure. I’ve done high stakes cases before, and so have a lot of folks here at the ACLU. That’s what we do.
All that you can really do is work hard, prepare, and go in and do your best.
Q: This isn’t the first time your team has argued this case. The day after the president signed the executive order, you were in the Brooklyn federal courthouse and got an emergency stay against the order. How did it feel that day to see two things emerge together — the executive order born of such hate and the spontaneous resistance movement of people ready to fight hate?
It was so energizing to see that crowd there as we walked out of the courthouse. I think that moment really crystallized for me that there was going to be a path forward. There was going to be a way for people to stand up against hate and that way was not just going to be what we did in the courts. It was also ordinary people standing up and resisting.
Our court battles are part of that equation — part of it — but far from the only thing to resist that agenda. That was made very clear.
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
Free Speech
National Security
ACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok BanACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Religious Liberty
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WASHINGTON – The Biden administration today released the first-ever national strategy to counter Islamophobia and related forms of bias and discrimination, including hate against Arab, Sikh, and South Asian Americans. In advance of the strategy, American Civil Liberties Union and its partners had urged the administration to overhaul government programs that reflect anti-Muslim discrimination. In particular, we have called for urgent action to constrain governmental agencies from continuing to exercise their authorities and technology to wrongly surveil and investigate, watchlist, and question and detain Muslims at the border, as well as deny immigration benefits to people from Muslim-majority countries. While the White House raised expectations that many of these issues would be addressed, the final strategy ended up falling far short. The following is a statement from Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project: “While this strategy acknowledges discrimination and its harms, it does little to end them and is a squandered opportunity. For decades, American officials have invoked national security to pass laws and implement programs that disproportionately harm Muslims and people perceived to be Muslim. A serious anti-discrimination strategy would concretely address multiple bias-infused government practices that deny our communities equal participation in civic life and our democracy, like federal watchlisting, surveillance, and investigation. We’re profoundly frustrated that the administration didn’t take even the basic, overdue step of recognizing that anti-Muslim discrimination is uniquely normalized and embedded in government policies.” -
VirginiaDec 2024
National Security
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Our client, Nizar Trabelsi, is in the United States against his will. The federal government brought him here from Belgium more than a decade ago and charged him with terrorism-related crimes. At trial, the government’s case failed: a federal jury found Mr. Trabelsi not guilty. But instead of allowing Mr. Trabelsi to return to Belgium after his acquittal, the United States placed him in highly restrictive immigration detention and began an ongoing effort to force him to Tunisia, where he was born and where he will very likely be tortured. Mr. Trabelsi’s detention violates the Constitution, immigration law, and the extradition treaty between the United States and Belgium. Through this lawsuit, he seeks to return to Belgium, and he demands an immediate improvement of his detention conditions. -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Immigrants' Rights
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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — This week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that the court does not have jurisdiction to decide whether the government can continue to detain Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian national who was brought to the United States against his will for prosecution and was cleared of all charges last year. The ruling means the United States will be able to continue to detain Mr. Trabelsi while it attempts to deport him to Tunisia, where he was born and where, as an immigration judge ruled earlier this year, he will likely face torture. The court also concluded that even if it did have jurisdiction over Mr. Trabelsi’s case, his claims challenging the government’s detention of him would fail. “Reviewing claims that the government is holding someone unlawfully is at the core of the judicial function, and we’re heartbroken for our client that the court got this so wrong,” said Brett Max Kaufman, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Center for Democracy. “The government’s arguments in defense of Mr. Trabelsi’s detention makes a hash of the Constitution, immigration laws, and its own extradition treaty.” In 2013, the United States forcibly extradited Mr. Trabelsi from Belgium to face criminal charges in the United States. In July 2023, after almost 10 years of highly restrictive pretrial detention, a federal jury cleared Mr. Trabelsi of all charges. But instead of releasing Mr. Trabelsi or returning him to Belgium, the U.S. transferred him to immigration detention, wrongly treating him as an applicant for admission and placing him in the deportation process. Over the years, the Belgian government has issued multiple formal diplomatic requests asking the U.S. to facilitate his return, but the U.S. has refused to send him back. Mr. Trabelsi filed a lawsuit challenging the government's authority to detain him. He also sought immediate improvements to his detention conditions. Those claims were not part of the court’s ruling today, and will continue to be litigated on a separate track. “Mr. Trabelsi only wants to return to Belgium after being illegally extradited to the United States, held for ten years, and then acquitted by a jury of any crimes,” said Nicole Hallett, clinical professor of law and director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. “He cannot be held indefinitely and we will continue to fight to make sure that justice ultimately prevails.” Mr. Trabelsi is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the University of Chicago Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, the ACLU of Virginia, and Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall Law School. The complaint in Trabelsi v. Crawford was filed against Jeffrey Crawford, warden of the Farmville Detention Center where Mr. Trabelsi is being held; Liana Castano, ICE field office director for the Washington Field Office; Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and Merrick Garland, U.S. attorney general.