The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), joined by The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Union of Reform Judaism, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and Women of Reform Judaism, has filed an amicus brief with the United States Supreme Court urging the court to uphold lower court rulings that have blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order on refugees.
The brief concludes that enforcing the Executive Order “risks once again sacrificing the nation’s core values in favor of prejudice and fear – a sacrifice that history has repeatedly proven has profound consequences both to the persons who suffer as a result and to the still-vibrant vision of the shining city on the hill.” The brief points to three historical examples when the U.S. turned its back on immigrants and refugees and later apologized, including the tragedy of the USS St. Louis, in which Jews fleeing Nazi Germany were denied entry into the U.S. and sent back to Europe, where many perished in the Holocaust; the “Chinese Exclusion” that barred thousands of Chinese laborers from coming to American in the 1800s; and the internment of the Japanese during World War II.