President Donald Trump's controversial travel and immigration ban "inflicts significant harm on American business" argued America's most valuable tech companies – including Apple, Facebook, Google, and Intel– in a legal brief on Sunday (5 February)

Lawyers representing 97 companies filed the court documents in support of a legal challenge against the president's executive order limiting travel and immigration from seven majority Muslim countries on 27 January.

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Other companies including Microsoft, Levi Strauss & Co., eBay, Netflix, and Uber were also on the brief. It provides legal arguments against the executive order.

Trump's order has drawn several legal challenges after it blocked people and refugees with valid visas and residency cards from from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the US for 90 days. His order sparked protests at airports throughout the country and around the world.

"The order makes it more difficult and expensive for US companies to recruit, hire, and retain some of the world's best employees," argued the court brief issued largely by American tech companies. Trump's order, it said, "disrupts ongoing business operations. And it threatens companies' ability to attract talent, business, and investment to the United States."

On 30 January Washington State sought an injunction to stop Trump's executive order. A federal judge in Seattle granted it on Friday 3 February, stating that the president's action "adversely affects the States' residents" employment, education, business, family relations, and freedom to travel.

The Trump administration must justify the president's order in the court on Monday 6 February. The supporting brief sent by the companies is just one of several similar supporting documents, including ones sent by the State of Hawaii and US law professors.

Over the weekend President Trump railed against the court's decision in a series of tweets, and challenged the validity of the judge, stating that "potential terrorists" could flood into the US as a result.

"The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!" Trump said on Saturday.

Yet "immigrants make many of the Nation's greatest discoveries, and create some of the country's most innovative and iconic companies," argued the tech firms legal filing on Sunday. "Immigrants are among our leading entrepreneurs, politicians, artists, and philanthropists."

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