The US Supreme Court on Tuesday formally dropped plans to hear a legal challenge brought by Hawaii against an earlier version of President Donald Trump’s travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority nations countries and a ban on refugees, both of which have expired and been replaced with revised policies.
Trump’s 120-day ban on refugees was expiring on Tuesday.
The court on Oct. 10 disposed of the first of two travel ban cases after Trump’s earlier 90-day ban on people entering the US from six predominantly Muslim countries expired on Sept. 24. It was a replaced with a modified, open-ended ban involving eight countries.
On the other hand, the Trump administration will require all refugees to provide information about their whereabouts going back a decade, twice as long as before, during screening for admission to the United States, starting on Wednesday, according to a State Department document seen by Reuters.
The US government is also taking a step that refugee advocates say will in effect pause the admission of most adult male refugees from 11 countries as well as some Palestinians, for whom a certain kind of advanced security screening is now required. The government has instructed organizations that process refugees abroad not to put in requests for that kind of screening, known as a Security Advisory Opinion, until new guidelines are sent.
