A Jewish refugee resettlement agency filed a lawsuit against the federal government Feb. 7 on behalf of Muslim immigrants, a first for the 138-year-old organization.
HIAS, formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, sued President Donald Trump in a Maryland district court Wednesday. As one of nine State Department sponsors, HIAS provided services to 350,000 refugees and asylum seekers last year.
The class-action suit also names the Departments of Homeland Security and State and their chiefs as defendants.
In the filing, HIAS alleges the president’s Jan. 27 order restricting entry to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries “was intended and designed to target and discriminate against Muslims.” The order also freezes global refugee admissions.
By suing the government over the order, HIAS joins a number of parties that have taken Trump to court, most notably the state of Washington in a case currently under consideration by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. A ruling from a lower court in that case blocked Trump’s order. In a tweet, Trump said that ruling was “ridiculous and will be overturned!”
HIAS and its co-plaintiff, the International Refugee Assistance Project, are represented by attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union.
The complaint alleges that the order violates the First and Fifth Amendment rights of Muslims in the country by singling them out based on their faith.
It names as plaintiffs several Muslims legally residing in the U.S. who are negatively impacted by the order, for instance, because they can’t leave the country without fear of being permanently barred.
“Our history and our values, as Jews and as Americans, require us to fight this illegal and immoral new policy with every tool at our disposal—including litigation,” HIAS President and CEO Mark Hetfield said in a statement.
The suit quotes the Torah as commanding Jews to “love the stranger because ‘we were strangers in the land of Egypt.’”
“The Executive Order severely impedes HIAS’s religious mission and work by intentionally discriminating against Muslims,” the suit alleges.
The lawsuit acknowledges that the order has been temporarily blocked by the Washington case, but notes that a reversal of the judge’s ruling would “reinstate the Executive Order in its entirety.”
The day before HIAS filed suit, the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle filed an amicus brief with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in the Washington case, referencing Jewish refugee migration in the 20th Century and asking that the appeals court “heed the lessons from the past and uphold the district court at this historic juncture in our nation’s history.”
