Without fanfare, US President Donald Trump on Monday signed a scaled back version of his controversial ban on many foreign travelers, hoping to avoid a new round of lawsuits and outrage while fulfilling a central campaign promise.
His order bars new visas for people from six Muslim-majority countries and temporarily shuts down the US’ refugee program.
The revised order, signed with none of the flourish of his first version, eliminates some of the most contentious aspects in an effort to surmount the court challenges that are sure to come. Trump’s first order, issued just a week after his inauguration, was halted by federal courts.
Photo: AFP
The new one leaves Iraq off the list of banned countries — at the urging of US military and diplomatic leaders — but still affects would-be visitors and immigrants from Iran, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Libya.
It also makes clear that current visa holders will not be impacted, and it removes language that would give priority to religious minorities — a provision some interpreted as a way to help Christians get into the US while excluding Muslims.
The order is not to take effect until March 16, despite earlier warnings from Trump and his aides that any delay would put national security at risk by allowing the entry of “bad dudes” who want to harm the country.
The changes underscore the very different position the president finds himself in.
Five weeks ago, Trump dropped the first order with a bang, catching lawmakers and members of his administration by surprise. He signed the order in a high-profile ceremony at the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes as US Secretary of Defense James Mattis stood by.
This time around, the president skipped the usual public ceremony altogether. Instead, the administration chose to have US Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and US Attorney General Jeff Sessions serve as the public faces of the rollout at a brief media announcement.
“I think today was about the implementation of it,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer said at an off-camera briefing.
Legal experts have said the new order addresses some of the constitutional concerns raised by a federal appeals court about the initial ban, but leaves room for more legal challenges.
Trump officials have said the goal has not changed: Keeping would-be terrorists out of the US while the government reviews vetting systems for refugees and visa applicants from certain parts of the world.
The original travel ban led to instant chaos at airports as US Department of Homeland Security officials scrambled to interpret how it was to be implemented and some travelers were detained before being sent back overseas or blocked from getting on airplanes abroad.
The order quickly became the subject of several legal challenges and was last month put on hold by a federal judge in Washington state.
The president repeatedly insisted he would continue to fight for the original order in court, even as aides worked to craft a new one. In the end, they chose to rescind the old order — although Spicer maintained the first was “100 percent legal and constitutional.”
Notably absent from Trump’s revised ban are repeated references to the death toll from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Critics of the original had said the president appeared to use those attacks as evidence of danger from certain foreigners, despite the fact that none of the men who hijacked jetliners that day were from any of the seven banned countries.
The White House dropped Iraq from the list of targeted countries following pressure from the Pentagon and US Department of State, which noted Iraq’s role in fighting the Islamic State group.
The new order does not address concerns raised in a Homeland Security intelligence analysis obtained last month by the Associated Press that concluded there was insufficient evidence that citizens of the originally banned countries posed a terror threat to the US.
The Trump administration has played down the significance of that report.
Trump’s new order reinstates his four-month ban on all refugees from around the world and keeps in place his plan to reduce the number of refugees to be let into the US this budget year to 50,000.
Syrians are also no longer subjected to an indefinite ban, despite Trump’s insistence as a candidate that they pose a serious security threat.
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