Travelers detained at Seattle airport released from custody

The Associated Press

SEATTLE — Individuals who were detained at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport as a result of President Donald Trump’s executive order have been released by the Department of Homeland Security, a Port of Seattle spokeswoman said Sunday.

Kathy Roeder said DHS told port officials the individuals can continue their travels. She didn’t know how many people had been released.

U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal said in a news release Sunday that two individuals were released.

She said one is a citizen of Sudan and the other a citizen of Yemen, both countries named in Trump’s 90-day travel ban to the U.S. She said one is attending a convention in Las Vegas and the other is visiting relatives.

Attorneys from the ACLU and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project said Saturday a Somali national was not allowed to enter and two other people were detained at the airport.

About 3,000 protesters holding signs and chanting “no hatred, no fear, immigrants are welcome here” and “let them in” gathered Saturday evening and continued demonstrating into Sunday morning.

Roeder said the crowd dispersed shortly after midnight but about 30 to 35 were arrested during the demonstration and face various misdemeanor charges.

She said there were no injuries and no damage to the facilities. She said she wasn’t aware of any more protests planned at the airport Sunday but that protests might happen in downtown Seattle.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly in Seattle issued an order Saturday halting any deportations related to Trump’s order after immigration advocates filed an emergency motion arguing that the president’s actions violated the due process rights of the immigrants.

Doug Honig, a spokesman for the ACLU of Washington state, told The Seattle Times that Zilly granted a motion for an emergency stay to prevent the two people who were detained at Sea-Tac from being sent out of the country on a flight to Dubai.

On Saturday, Gov. Jay Inslee blasted Trump’s executive order banning people from certain Muslim-majority nations as “unjustifiable cruelty,” as pro-immigration protesters gathered at the airport.

Trump signed an executive order Friday that bans legal U.S. residents and visa-holders from seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the U.S. for 90 days and puts an indefinite hold on a program resettling Syrian refugees.

At a fiery news conference denouncing Trump’s order, Inslee said he had met with a woman, a U.S. citizen, whose husband was denied entry at Sea-Tac after flying from Vienna. It wasn’t clear if Inslee was speaking about the same traveler or if multiple people were detained.

The United States “allowed her husband to get on a plane in Vienna but didn’t let him go the 6 feet across this gate to embrace his wife,” Inslee said of the man.

Inslee compared Trump’s order to the detention of Japanese-Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

“The manifest and unjustifiable cruelty caused by President Trump’s executive order is now on full display here at Seattle International Airport, and the gross incompetence and ineffectiveness of this action is on full display here at Seattle,” Inslee said.