Pelosi says House will vote on bill to repeal travel ban

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Monday that the House will consider legislation in the coming weeks to repeal the Trump administration’s travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries.

Pelosi’s announcement came on the third anniversary of Trump signing orders to suspend immigration from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia in his first week in office.

Pelosi said that the House would take up legislation authored by Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) to repeal the Trump administration’s travel ban and limit the president from establishing future restrictions unless the administration provides specific evidence to justify it and consults with Congress. The bill, which Chu introduced last April, would also amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on religion.

“House Democrats continue to stand opposed to President Trump’s cruel, un-American travel ban in all of its iterations. In the coming weeks, the House Judiciary Committee will mark up and bring to the floor the NO BAN Act to prohibit religious discrimination in our immigration system and limit the President’s ability to impose such biased and bigoted restrictions,” Pelosi said in a statement.

Pelosi did not specify when the House would consider the legislation. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) announced later Monday morning that his panel would take up the bill in two weeks, meaning its markup is likely to occur around mid-February.

“It is essential that we take away the president’s power to put prejudice into policy,” Chu said at a press conference.

The announcement comes after Trump confirmed last week that he plans to expand the travel ban to more countries, though he did not list which ones. Multiple media outlets have reported that the countries could include Belarus, Burma, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania.

Any additions to the travel ban are certain to spark legal challenges.

The Supreme Court narrowly ruled in 2018 to uphold the third version of the travel ban, which applied to people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Venezuela and North Korea to varying degrees. That version was watered down from the original travel ban, which also included Sudan and Iraq. The previous two iterations of the travel ban had been invalidated by lower-court rulings.