Donald Trump Immigration Law

Do you think Donald Trump’s immigration ban is dead in the water, think again.

Yes, President Trump’s controversial executive order has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge — and a U.S. appeals court heard arguments from both sides on Tuesday. (Legal experts say the case almost certainly will go to the Supreme Court.)

Yes, Trump’s directive has failed to win the popular support he had hoped for. It also has faced tremendous corporate backlash, including from the leaders of GoogleGOOG+0.47%  , AAPL+0.28%   MicrosoftMSFT+0.15%  , Netflix NFLX+0.15%  , Levi Strauss and more than 90 other U.S. companies.

But if the courts follow statutory and case law, Trump is likely to get his way in the end. That, at least, is the clear implication of anonpartisan report recently circulated to members of Congress.

Trump stunned the world on Jan. 27 when he signed a sudden executive order suspending immigration for 90 days from seven mostly Muslim countries he deemed to have ties to Islamic terrorists, from Iran to Libya.

But the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 grants “the President broad authority to bar or impose conditions upon the entry of aliens,” reports the CRS, a federal organization that provides authoritative, impartial and nonpartisan analysis of major issues for members of Congress.

The law’s main limit on his powers is simply that “the President must have found that the entry of any aliens or class of aliens would be ‘detrimental to the interests of the United States.’” However, that’s not much of a limit at all, the CRS notes, because the law does not specify what is, or isn’t, detrimental. It’s up to the president to decide.