Rabbis Hold Sit-in at Trump Hotel, 19 Arrested: NYPD

More than a dozen rabbis and rabbinical students were arrested in Manhattan on Monday night while protesting President Donald Trump’s executive order temporarily banning travelers and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries.

As many as 200 Jewish religious leaders marched through the Upper West Side in protest despite warnings they might be arrested.

At one point, some of them sat down in the road in front of the Trump International Hotel and Tower at Columbus Circle and prayed. 

Police said 19 people were arrested for blocking traffic. 

"This is a country of love and compassion, and as Jews and as religious leaders we want to speak up to that injustice that we're seeing in this country," Rabbi Jonathan Lipnick, of the Jewish Theological Seminary, said. 

A number of groups sponsored the protest, including the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and the Multi-Faith Alliance for Syrian Refugees.

The fierce battle over President Trump's travel and refugee ban edged up the judicial escalator Monday, headed for a possible final face-off at the Supreme Court.

Travelers, temporarily unbound, tearfully reunited with loved ones at U.S. airports.

The Justice Department filed a new defense of Trump's ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim nations as a federal appeals court weighs whether to restore the administration's executive order.

The lawyers said the travel ban was a "lawful exercise" of the president's authority to protect national security and said a judge's order that put the policy on hold should be overruled.

The filing with the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was the latest salvo in a high-stakes legal fight surrounding Trump's order, which was halted Friday by a federal judge in Washington state.