(Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson speaks on CNN about a federal judge's ruling that placed a temporary hold on President Donald Trump's immigration order.Screenshot via CNN)
Washington's state attorney general had a warning for President Donald Trump after a federal judge put a temporary nationwide hold on Trump's immigration order.
"In our country, no one is above the law and that includes the president,"Bob Ferguson, Washington state's top law official, said on CNN Friday night.
US District Judge James Robart on Friday temporarily blocked Trump's order that banned most travel to the US from seven majority-Muslim nations. Robart's ruling came after Washington state and Minnesota urged a nationwide hold on the executive order that has launched legal battles nationwide.
Robart's ruling is the most extensive action against Trump's executive order since it was signed last week.
"Attorneys in my office were working around the clock for six days to make this happen," Ferguson said on CNN. "I'm prepared for this case to go all the way to the Supreme Court."
Ferguson said in preparing the motion, attorneys focused on elements of Trump's executive order that appeared to violate the Constitution's due-process protections or raise concerns about religious discrimination.
(Demonstrators participate in a protest by the Yemeni community against U.S. President Donald Trump's travel ban in the Brooklyn borough of New York, U.S., February 2, 2017.REUTERS/Lucas Jackson)
The Trump administration has used the threat of a terrorist attack in the US to justify banning travel to the US for 90 days by most people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.
The executive order also barred all refugees from entering the US for 120 days and indefinitely barred Syrian refugees from entering the US.
Here's part of what Robart's ruling says about Trump's executive order:
"While preventing terrorist attacks is an important goal, the order does nothing to further that purpose by denying admission to children fleeing Syria’s civil war, to refugees who valiantly assisted the US military in Iraq, or to law abiding tech workers who have lived in Washington for years."
Amazon is among the Washington state-based companies that threw its support behind attorneys challenging Trump's immigration order.
Washington Solicitor General Noah Purcell said Friday: "We only challenged the parts that are actually affecting people immediately, which are the parts about refugees and the parts about targeting these seven countries."
( Ethnic Yemenis and supporters protest against President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen on February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty Images)