On what basis might Trump&#39;s executive order on immigration be illegal? On 27 January 2017, US President Donald Trump has issued an executive order entitled 'Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States'. On 30 January 2017, the acting Attorney General at the time refused to defend it in court because it was unconstitutional or otherwise illegal: [news article]. On what basis(es) might this executive order be illegal?
A few possible reasons it could be illegal (on an issue spotting basis, not a careful analysis of each possible reason): The EO is intended to discriminate on the basis of religion and in fact does so in violation of the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution. The EO is intended to unlawfully discriminate based upon race or ethnicity in violation of U.S. statutes or the 14th Amendment. The EO was adopted without observing the notice and hearing requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act. The EO took effect prematurely because it was not duly published in the Federal Register for the time period required by law, or was otherwise insufficiently promulgated. The EO repeals other regulations currently in force in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act. The EO improperly disturbs the vested, albeit limited, rights of existing visa holders (or visa applicants) without due process of law, and/or in violation of unenumerated 10th Amendment rights. Refugee visa applicants under an already adopted regulation are entitled to an individualized consideration of their application as a matter of due process and the EO amounts to an ex post facto law as applied to people already in the application process under that regulation. The EO improperly deprives people who purchased non-refundable plane tickets in reasonable reliance of their visa rights which were not revocable under any law in place at the time those tickets were purchased of a property right in those plane tickets without compensation or due process of law under the 5th Amendment. The EO is void for vagueness as the ambiguities in its drafting makes it impossible to determine who is and is not affected by the EO and in what manner. There is a conflict in the immigration statutes between statutory provisions and treaty obligations related to refugees, and the regulation implementing a particular section of the immigration law's grant of regulatory authority, and the refugee protections must prevail. A person claiming to be a refugee has a due process right to individualized consideration of their circumstances, either by statute, by treaty, or under the constitution, which the EO does not respect. The treatment of dual citizens under the EO either is contrary to statutory immigration law or to a treaty or to the U.S. Constitution and customary international law. The EO violates one or more treaties between affected countries and the United States regarding immigration. The scope and terms of the EO exceed the authority granted to the President by the section of the immigration statutes relied upon for authority to pass the EO. The administration failed to articulate a rational basis for distinguishing between nations included in the ban and nations not included in support of the EO as required by the Administrative Procedures Act. There is no rational basis for distinguishing between nations included in the ban and nations not included as required by the U.S. Constitution (a much weaker test since it allows for post hoc rationalizations). Authority to implement the relevant section of the immigration law is vested in one or more officials at the United States Department of State, rather than the President directly, and none of those officials approved the EO. The military interpreters and their families may have a contract with the U.S. government as part of their employment that gives them a right to a visa, in which case the EO would be a law impairing contracts in violation of the U.S. Constitution, as applied to them. Some of the immigrants may need to accompany U.S. citizen children in order for the children to exercise the childrens' rights to enter the country and as applied the EO may violate the U.S. citizen childrens' rights. The CBP may be incorrectly interpreting the EO (which even the administration is not clear about) and therefore violating the law as applied because the EO does not actually authorize their action or because the way that they interpreted the EO was an abuse of their discretion. The manner in which the EO was implemented (e.g. long periods of time in handcuffs for civilians not accused of any crime and with no ability to foresee that they would be denied entry, separating young children from parents, etc.) may have been an unreasonable seizure as applied, even if detention per se was authorized. The 4th Amendment requires that searches and seizures be reasonable in the manner that they are carried out even if the search or seizure is itself authorized by law. UPDATE February 2, 2017: A federal judge in California has found that at least some of these reasons have merit and has stayed the EO and set an expedited hearing and briefing schedule on whether the injunction against the EO should remain in force. UPDATE AND EPILOGUE June 28, 2018: The final version of the ban was ultimately upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Trump v. Hawaii on June 26, 2018 in a 5-4 decision. Litigation of the version of the ban in the OP was dismissed as moot when it was withdrawn and replaced with a similar but newer version of the EO. The four justices in the dissent rely on the first reason given, as did lower courts in the case and in parallel litigation. A core distinction between the majority and the dissent is the weight given by statements made by President Trump about the policy, and how much deference to give to the government's reasons for the policy offered up in court. Justice Neil Gorsuch, who cast a deciding vote in the case, took office April 10, 2017, after this answer and the first update to this answer were written.
"Police" that one would generally encounter in the US are local or state agencies, and the ordinary crimes you mentioned are matters of state law, so they would be reported to local or state police. (There are federal law enforcement agencies, but they only deal with specialized areas of federal law, and you wouldn't ordinarily encounter them in daily life.) On the other hand, immigration is a matter of federal law. The responsibilities of local or state police are governed by state law, and the federal government cannot compel state officers to enforce federal law. A specific state's law could potentially require state and local police to ask about people's immigration status and/or ask the federal government to check on the status of someone they suspect might be illegal. I believe a few red states have enacted, or are considering, such laws, though they usually deal with people stopped by police rather than people filing a report. Some of these laws have been challenged in court, and I am not sure which exact parts of which laws are still being implemented for each of those states. Most states do not have such laws.
The law you cite says that the Secretary shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request That includes specific individual returns. That it was intended to include such returns is made clear by the provisions restricting identifiable individual data to executive session. Whether this ought to be the law might well be debated. Whether the House ought to use this law as a way to get at Trump's returns could also be debated. Those are matters of politics, or perhaps ethics, not law. Whether some other provision of law overrides this provision in this case is pretty clearly going to be argued in court, and we will see what the decision is. I won't try to predict it here.
I think that is not a &quot;reasonable&quot; interpretation of the order, but that's separate from the question of what will be enforced. Focusing on the word of the order, No entity in Texas can compel receipt of a COVID-19 vaccine by any individual, including an employee or a consumer What does it mean to &quot;compel&quot; a person to do something? A court can compel a person to stay in jail for some period of time, and can order the police to use force to enforce that requirement – that's the classical example of compulsion. Nobody except the police can compel a consumer to do anything. All of the words of the order have to be given meaning, and it is not reasonable to say that &quot;compel&quot; is limited to &quot;actions backed up by police action&quot;. The government does not separately compel &quot;consumers&quot; and &quot;employees&quot; to do things. In order to sensibly interpret &quot;compel&quot; and &quot;consumer&quot;, this has to interpreted as including things other than &quot;pointing a gun at a person&quot;. The only sensible interpretation is one that includes denying service to those who do not comply. In addition, the series of &quot;Whereas's&quot; clearly indicate a ban on &quot;no shots, no service&quot; conditions. It remains to be seen in court whether this is found to be enforceable (via the &quot;failure to comply&quot; clause, exactly analogous to other emergency powers allowing restrictions on gatherings etc. previously).
In the UK and USA (and I imagine other jurisdictions) there have been laws that explicitly provide for orders obliging entities to (A) provide access or information and (B) keep the order secret. For example, in the USA the Stored Communications Act, Fair Credit Reporting Act and Right to Financial Privacy Act authorise the FBI to issue National Security Letters (Wikipedia, EFF, EPIC, Lawfare). These are an administrative subpoena, without prior approval from a judge, for meta-information (e.g. phone numbers dialed or email recipients addressed but not the content) of communications relevant to national security investigations. They typically contain a non-disclosure requirement prohibiting the recipient of the NSL from disclosing its existence or the FBI's demands. There have been challenges on First Amendment grounds to the non-disclosure aspect but, so far as I'm aware, they have all ultimately failed. Some of their non-disclosure requirements may eventually expire under other laws. In response, so-called 'warrant canaries' (Wikipedia) have been developed (and gone a bit further than the original idea) - these are intended to allow entities to relatively passively warn of such an order having been received if not the detail of the order. However, they can be legally risky in that they might be seen by a court as trying to circumvent the non-disclosure requirement and therefore breaking it.
The legal question here is whether police have an enforceable power to enjoin a person from visiting a particular person or from entering a particular jurisdiction (especially the one where they have police powers). The obligation to obey police orders generally ends at matters regarding arrest, traffic orders, or crowd control. Freedom of travel is a fundamental constitutional right, along with freedom of association. That does not mean that you can go absolutely anywhere you want and do anything you want with whoever you want, but it does mean that any restriction have to be encoded in law, and such laws have to pass strict scrutiny. Any enforceable legal restrictions would have to emanate from the courts.
There are many different kinds of laws, and many different ways of violating them. The main two are (1) criminal law, which generally addresses violations that injure the government's interests; and (2) civil law, which largely addresses violations that injure private parties' interests. Some conduct can violate both sets of laws: If you steal something from a store, the government can put you in jail for theft, and the store can sue you for the value of the item you stole. If you punch someone in the face, the government can can put you in jail for assault, and the person you punched can sue you to pay for their hospital bills. If you grope a woman in a dressing room, the government can put you in jail for sexual assault, and the woman can sue you for battery. Donald Trump falls into that last category. Jean Carroll has sued him for battery, but the government cannot prosecute Trump for the crime because enough time has passed that the criminal statute of limitations has expired. Moreover, a civil trial cannot subject someone to jail time because such a deprivation of liberty requires greater procedural safeguards -- jury unanimity, proof beyond a reasonable doubt, etc. -- that do not always apply to civil trials like this. Trump's status as ex-president has no bearing on the penalties the court may legally impose on him.
ICE has a degree of authority to deport without court hearing, via an expedited process. The legal framework for such deportations are explained here, and rely on 8 USC 1225. The Secretary of DHS has authority to establish rules, and has recently done so here. The current regulations pertaining to expedited removal are at 8 CFR 253.3. There is no exemption for people being medically treated, for covid-19 or any other reason, but "parole" is available (at the discretion of the attorney general) to "parole" an immigrant if it is "is required to meet a medical emergency". Thus an illegal immigrant in the ICU might be exempt from immediate deportation, but that is at the discretion of the AG. State and local officials do not have the authority to interfere in the enforcement of federal law, even if the state or municipality has declared itself a "sanctuary". The criminal penalties for interference are spelled out here; no law compells cooperation, the law simply prohibits forcible interference.