This is word play. The law is ambiguous. We all understand that ultimately the law means what the courts say it does.
Ashcroft’s interpretation was automatically reasonable, because, when he took his action, a court had held the law to mean what he thought it did, and no court had ruled otherwise.
Guinastasia, the sorry history of the Japanese internment camps helps demonstrate my point: just because civil rights are taken away during a time of emergency, it doesn’t follow that those rights are gone forever.