Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, who is defending the travel ban, told a three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle that the executive order halting travel from six majority Muslim nations doesn't say anything about religion.
"This order is aimed at aliens abroad, who themselves don't have constitutional rights," Wall said in a hearing broadcast live on C-Span and other news stations. Advocates for refugees and immigrants rallied outside the federal courthouse in Seattle, some carrying "No Ban, No Wall" signs.
They focused their questions on whether they could consider Trump's campaign statements calling for a ban on Muslims entering the US, with one judge asking if there was anything other than "willful blindness" that would prevent them from doing so.
Today, Wall told the judges that "over time, the president clarified that what he was talking about was Islamic terrorist groups and the countries that sponsor or shelter them."
After Trump issued his initial travel ban on a Friday in late January, bringing chaos and protests to airports around the country, a Seattle judge blocked its enforcement nationwide - a decision that was unanimously upheld by a three-judge 9th Circuit panel.
The president then rewrote his executive order, rather than appeal to the US Supreme Court, and in March, US District Judge Derrick Watson in Honolulu blocked the new version from taking effect, citing what he called "significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus" in Trump's campaign statements.