President, Donald Trump of the United State has just signed a new executive order on immigration says the White House.
The Trump administration has signed a newexecutive order that temporarily bans people from six majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States.
The new executive order, effective next week, officially revokes and replaces the controversial order President Trump signed in late-January that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked last month.
The new orderhas been crafted to attempt to withstand legal challenge, exempting permanent legal residents and applying only to future visa applicants, not those who already hold valid visas.
The new order also narrows the list the counties; it’s now six majority-Muslim countries instead of seven. Iraq has been removed from the original list at the urging of the Pentagonand State Department. The countries that remain on the list are Iran, Libya, Yemen, Syria,Somalia and Sudan.
Iraq is no longer one of the seven banned countries “because we have received firm commitments from the government of Iraq about increased cooperation in terms of info sharing and other related activities,” a senior U.S. official said on a background call with reporters before the executive order signing.
“Iraq is an important ally in the fight to defeat ISIS,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said this morning.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly were also on hand to defend the new ban at a news conference.
“This executive order responsibly provides a needed pause so we can carefully review how we screen people coming from these countries of concern,” Sessions said.
A source told ABC News that Trump was reluctant to replace the original executive order and wanted to continue fighting to defend it in court, preferring the new one as a supplement of the first. His legal team, however, made the case that the first one had to be revoked and he reluctantly decided to defer to them, the source said.
The provision on refugees has also been changed. The new order puts a temporary halt on all refugees entering the United States. The first order put an indefinite halt on Syrian refugees. They are no longer singled out.
“More than 300 people, according to the FBI, that came here as refugees, are under an FBI investigation today for portneital terorrism related activities,” Sessions said.
In addition, the prioritization of admissions of religious minorities as refugees, which was part of the previous executive order, has been removed from the one issued today.
This ban will not go into place immediately, but is slated to start March 16 at 12:01 am ET.
Tillerson said today that Americans “can have high confidence that we are identifying ways to improve the vetting process.”
When the previous order was issued, it was unclear whether the order applied to green card holders, people who were stuck at airports and others who had their visas revoked. The chaos sparked protests and legal action throughout the United States
The first travel ban ran into legal challenges. A joint lawsuit was filed, eventually leading to a nationwide temporary restraining order being put in place by a federal district court in Washington State, which was upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Trump team submitted a filing Feb. 16 asking for the 9th Circuit Court to hold off on making any further moves on the case until the new executive order is issued. “Rather than continuing this litigation, the president intends in the near future to rescind the Order and replace it with a new, substantially revised Executive Order to eliminate what the panel erroneously thought were constitutional concerns,” the filing states.
In response to the filing, the 9th Circuit judges deferred a planned vote on whether to rehear the administration’s appeal of the restraining order.
The other legal challenges filed by several additional states could continue in district courts around the country even after today’s order revokes the original ban.
Source: ABC NEWS
