Donald Trump
Donald TrumpReuters

The Zionist Organization of America has filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in support of US President Donald Trump’s most recent ban on travel from a number of predominately Muslim countries.

The group, which has supported Trump’s policies, in its brief said the action did not amount to a “Muslim ban” or violate the Constitution. On Wednesday, ZOA released a statement announcing its Feb. 28 filing of the brief.

ZOA cited terror attacks by immigrants in Boston, San Bernardino, Orlando and Manhattan, as well as Europe, in its defense of the executive order.

“The Proclamation’s vital purpose exemplifies our most fundamental, overriding value of protecting American lives,” ZOA President Morton Klein, said in the statement.

The executive order announced in September prohibits travel from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, as well as from Chad and North Korea, and includes some Venezuelan government officials and their families. The ban went into effect in December, even as the appeals moved forward.

It was the Trump administration’s third attempt to prevent the entry into the United States of travelers from those countries. US courts struck down the earlier bids by Trump to impose a ban on travel from a number of Muslim-majority countries.

On Friday, the Anti-Defamation League spearheaded an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to block the executive order.

In February, the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Virginia declared Trump’s travel ban unconstitutional. The decision came a month after the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from a similar decision from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

The U.S. Supreme Court had previously allowed the ban, put in place by Trump by presidential proclamation in September, to go into effect while litigation challenging it continues.

Attorneys general for 16 states and Washington, D.C., also filed an amicus brief Friday with the Supreme Court against the travel ban.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the ban at the end of April.