HONOLULU — Hawaii’s attorney general wants to add a new plaintiff to the state’s lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s travel ban on people from seven mostly Muslim countries: Ismail Elshikh, the imam of the Muslim Association of Hawaii, whose mother-in-law
HONOLULU — Hawaii’s attorney general wants to add a new plaintiff to the state’s lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s travel ban on people from seven mostly Muslim countries: Ismail Elshikh, the imam of the Muslim Association of Hawaii, whose mother-in-law is a Syrian national living in Syria.
State Attorney General Doug Chin is asking a judge to partially lift a stay in the case to allow the state to file an amended complaint that details the effect the travel ban would have on Elshikh’s family and others in Hawaii.
Elshikh, his wife and their five children are U.S. citizens, according to court documents the state filed Wednesday. The executive order will prevent his mother-in-law from visiting the family in Hawaii: “The family is devastated,” said the state’s proposed amended complaint. The travel ban has created additional obstacles to completing the mother-in-law’s visa application process, said Hawaii attorney general spokesman Josh Wisch.
The executive order “conveys to them a message that their own country would discriminate against individuals who share their ethnicity, including members of their own family, and who hold the same religious beliefs,” the document said.
Chin filed Hawaii’s lawsuit last week, noting that the ban will also have a “chilling effect” on the state’s tourism industry.
Hawaii has hired a Washington, D.C. law firm to help. Wisch said the firm is giving the state a 50 percent discount. “The amount the state is obliged to pay at this time is up to $150,000,” he added.
Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson suspended the case while a nationwide injunction on the travel ban remains in place. Three judges— including one from Honolulu— on the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday against immediately reinstating Trump’s travel ban, which temporarily suspended the nation’s refugee program and immigration from seven mostly Muslim countries that have raised terrorism concerns.
Watson is giving the federal government until Monday to respond to Hawaii’s request.
