Attorney General Xavier Becerra Joins 16 Attorneys General Filing an Amicus Brief In Support of the State of Virginia in Aziz v. Trump, Case Challenging the Trump Travel Ban

Wednesday, February 8, 2017
Contact: (916) 210-6000, agpressoffice@doj.ca.gov

LOS ANGELES - Attorney General Xavier Becerra today joined 16 state attorneys general in filing a friend-of-the-court brief in the Eastern District Court of Virginia in Aziz v. Trump, a case challenging the Trump Administration’s travel ban.

According to the complaint filed on January 30, 2017, the plaintiffs, Tareq Aqel Mohammed Aziz and Ammar Aqel Mohammed Aziz, Yemeni visa holders, flew into Washington Dulles International Airport, were handcuffed and detained. The complaint alleges that the plaintiffs were forced to sign papers that they neither read nor understood and consequently were coerced into surrendering their visas. They were then sent on an airplane to Ethiopia.

“There is nothing in our Constitution or laws that grants anyone; including the President of the United States, the power to disregard the Bill of Rights,” said Attorney General Becerra. “By detaining people who had a lawful right to be here from entering the United States, denying them legal counsel and cancelling their visas simply because of their religion or national origin, the Trump Administration exceeded its authority and violated the Constitution. We are working in California to initiate and support efforts to seek justice in cases like Aziz v. Trump.”

Earlier this week, Attorney General Xavier Becerra joined the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, and the District of Columbia, in filing a friend-of-the-court brief in the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in State of Washington v. Trump, a case opposing the Trump Administration’s unconstitutional and un-American travel ban.

A copy of the brief is attached to the electronic version of this release at oag.ca.gov/news.

# # #
AttachmentSize
PDF icon ed_va_state_amicus_as_filed.pdf319.49 KB