President Donald Trump signed a new executive order Monday that limits travel to the United States by citizens of now six majority-Muslim countries.
While softening many of the most objectionable conditionals of the original order, the Trump administration made it clear that it still has deep reservations about America’s long-running policy of accepting refugees.
“The executive order signed today by President Trump will make America safer, and address long-overdue concerns about the security of our immigration system,” Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly said. “We must undertake a rigorous review of our visa and refugee vetting programs to increase our confidence in the entry decisions we make for visitors and immigrants to the United States. We cannot risk the prospect of malevolent actors using our immigration system to take American lives.”
Citing national security concerns, the White House said the new executive order has been tailored to a federal appeals court decision that blocked his Jan. 27 executive order that temporarily suspended entry into the United States by citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.
The new order no longer includes Iraq, but freezes for 90 days the entry of anyone from the six remaining countries who do not already have a valid visa permitting their entry. It also puts a 120-day moratorium on refugee admissions from other countries.
The order goes into effect March 16.
“Iraq is treated differently under this executive order,” said a senior administration official who is knowledgeable about the order but not authorized to speak publicly as a matter of practice.
The administration said that 300 people who entered the country as refugees were currently being investigated for potential terrorism threats. “That is not a small number,” said an administration official who said the individuals either infiltrated the United States or were radicalized following entry.
“Apart from the removal of Iraq, the new travel ban is essentially the same as the old travel ban, and has the same fundamental flaws -- its choice of countries is arbitrary, its effect will be counter-productive, and its real goal is not improved security but meeting a campaign commitment to ban Muslims,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee.
The release of the new ban ends weeks of haggling between Homeland Security and Justice officials over whether to revoke some visas of some 60,000 to 100,000 people from the seven countries. Those visas were reinstated after a federal judge in Seattle blocked the initial executive order. Some officials worry that revoking them again would run afoul of the judge’s order.
In issuing his decision blocking the order, U.S. District Judge James Robart sided with the states of Washington and Minnesota who argued that Trump’s travel ban targeted Muslims and violated the constitutional rights of immigrants and their families.
The new order seeks to get around the issue by ending a special carve-out for Christian migrants that some saw as an indication that the ban was discriminatory. While it includes Syria, nationals from the country are no longer banned indefinitely but are part of the same 120-day moratorium.
Iraq was removed from the list after government officials agreed to increase the level of vetting by its own officials. Senior administration officials said the Iraq government will also share additional information with the United States about its nationals. Iraq also agreed to accept nationals who have been ordered deported by the United States for overstaying their visas and other deportable offenses.
Senior administration officials said they will review the policies following the moratorium to determine whether to add or remove countries from the list.
Criticism from groups that help refugees and immigrants was swift.
"This order is essentially religious discrimination masquerading, once again, in the language of national security. The order targets people from Muslim-majority countries and will sharply reduce resettlement of Muslim refugees," Human Rights First’s Eleanor Acer said. "Legal word-smithing cannot obscure the discriminatory intent and impact of the order. Not only does this order trample upon U.S. commitments to religious freedom, non-discrimination, and refugee protection, but former national security officials from both sides of the aisle agree that these kinds of bans make our nation less safe.”
“The order does nothing to improve our national security and will have painful human consequences: it will separate families and leave tens of thousands of people – mostly women and children – exposed to grave danger and despair,” said Hans van de Weerd, chair of Refugee Council USA
In the past weeks, hundreds of thousands of Americans have expressed their support for refugees and immigrants, including business leaders, religious leaders, mayors and civil society leaders from all across the country. They have called for preserving longstanding U.S. values of welcome, tolerance, and inclusion. RCUSA encourages the Administration to listen to these voices and to conduct its review and any program changes in a manner consistent with these values.
The revisions address some of the legal problems that crippled the first order, and that prompted more than two dozen lawsuits filed in federal courts from California and Washington to Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.
The hastily initial order, notably, appeared ambiguous in its treatment of legal permanent U.S. residents. Seeking to impose clarity several days after the order was issued, White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn II issued “Authoritative Guidance” asserting that the travel ban did not apply to legal permanent residents.
The 9th Circuit panel said that wasn’t enough.
“In light of the government’s shifting interpretations of the executive order, we cannot say that the current interpretation by White House counsel, even if authoritative and binding, will persist past the immediate stage of these proceedings,” the appellate panel stated.
In other ways, though, the new order will face similar challenges prompted, in part, by Trump’s own words.
The original Jan. 27 order banned admissions to the United States for 90 days of citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. While the new order dropped Iraq from the list, the continued focus on majority-Muslim countries will confront the same problem that undermined Trump’s initial order. The judges who have ruled against Trump have cited his rhetoric concerning Muslims and the fact, as Virginia-based U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema noted, that “the ‘Muslim ban’ was a centerpiece of the president’s campaign for months.”
“President Trump has recommitted himself to religious discrimination, and he can expect continued disapproval from both the courts and the people,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.
Michael Doyle contributed.
