Trump administration asks Supreme Court to let revised travel ban take effect

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Legal showdown over President Trump's revised travel order

Revised order to be reviewed by three Clinton-appointed judges

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court late Thursday to let the revised travel ban take effect.

The administration filed two emergency applications with the nine Court justices seeking to block two lower court rulings that blocked President Trump’s executive order.

In the filing, the Justice Department argued that the appeals court in Richmond, Va. made several mistakes in ruling against Trump’s travel order.

Sarah Isgur Flores, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the ban is lawful.

The Justice Department is "confident that President Trump's executive order is well within his lawful authority to keep the nation safe and protect our communities from terrorism," Flores said. “The president is not required to admit people from countries that sponsor or shelter terrorism, until he determines that they can be properly vetted and do not pose a security risk to the United States."

The order barred entry for people from six Muslim majority nations, including Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days while the U.S. implements stricter visa screenings.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals called the national security concerns an after-the-fact justification for a policy that was "intended to bar Muslims from this country."

Rights groups that have been fighting the policy in the courts said the justices should not allow the travel and refugee bans to take effect.

"Again and again, our nation's courts have found that President Trump's Muslim ban is unconstitutional. We will continue to defend our plaintiffs' right to live free from fear of discriminatory treatment by the federal government," said Karen Tumlin, legal director of the National Immigration Law Center.

Trump signed his first executive order on travel a week after he took office in January. It applied to travelers from the six countries as well as Iraq and took effect immediately, causing chaos and panic at airports as the Homeland Security Department scrambled to figure out who the order covered and how it was to be implemented.

A federal judge blocked it eight days later, an order that was upheld by a 9th Circuit panel. Rather than pursue an appeal, the administration said it would revise the policy.

In March, Trump issued a narrower order, but federal courts that have examined it so far have blocked it as well.

Fox News’ Serafin Gomez and the Associated Press contributed to this report.