There's No Quick Fix to Trump's Immigration Ban

The high-speed cycle of the first 24 hours after President Donald Trump’s executive order banned immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries is giving way to the long, hard slog of legal reality. A State Department memo made public in court proceedings Wednesday reveals that the Trump administration revoked all visas from those countries on Friday, Jan. 27, the day of the order. That revocation, the essence of the immigration ban, remains in place. As a result, the federal judicial orders against the ban are ineffectual -- because no one from the seven countries has been allowed to board a plane to the U.S. since the day the memo was issued.

The lesson for the next four years is brutally clear. Excited resistance was inspiring, and the symbolic image of the courts working after hours to freeze the immigration order will persist. But the actual fight over the effects of Trump’s order, like the rest of his policies, is just getting started. And without slow, patient effort to work within the legal system, the fight cannot be won.