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Nicholas Kamm / AFP / Getty Images
WASHINGTON — President Trump will sign a revised, and significantly downsized, version of his refugee and travel order on Monday that will take effect on March 16, his counselor, Kellyanne Conway, said.
Iraq will be removed from the previous list of seven majority-Muslim countries whose citizens will not be allowed to enter the United States temporarily, Conway said, citing “their enhanced screening and reporting measures.”
The order also makes explicitly clear that legal permanent residents are not covered by the order — a point of repeated confusion in the original order. “That's made much more clear now,” Conway said.
“If you have travel docs, if you actually have a visa, if you are a legal permanent resident, you are not covered under this particular executive action,” Conway added. Under the new order, current visa holders — in addition to LPRs — will not be subjected to the travel ban provision.
Additionally, the program for resettling Syrian refugees — which was indefinitely banned under the initial order — will now be treated no differently than resettlement of refugees from all other countries.
“I think people will see six or seven major points about this executive order that do clarify who is covered,” Conway said.
After a weekend of lashing out to his staff and on Twitter at his presidential predecessor (and Apprentice successor), Trump will now be signing an order acknowledging that a move from his first days in office was met with enough resistance that he is taking it back.
It's a rare move for any president, let alone this one, Trump essentially will step back — for the second time — from his position on how to address refugee and immigrant programs.
In December 2015, Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.” The position — Trump's “Muslim ban” — became a key rallying point for, and controversy of, his early primary campaign.
Fast-forward to his presidency, though, and Trump's initial executive order — issued on Jan. 27 — looked a bit different, although still expansive, in comparison to current and comparable policies. Trump's order halted entry into the US for 90 days to all people — with a few narrow exceptions — from seven majority-Muslim nations: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, and Yemen. The order also halted the entire refugee program for 120 days and the Syrian part of the program indefinitely.
Perhaps most dramatically, the order took effect immediately, leading to confusion at airports across the country — particularly given the Friday afternoon signing and announcement of the order. That confusion — and reports of people being held at and in some cases deported from airports — then led to protests, first in New York and Los Angeles, but soon across the country.
About 30 hours after the order was signed, a federal judge in Brooklyn, US District Judge Ann Donnelly, halted deportations under the order. Throughout the weekend, other federal judges weighed in — all siding against the ban, including one court that added a ban on detaining individuals under the order and another court that ordered a person deported under the order to be returned to the US.
As the next week began, one of the primary issues of confusion was whether lawful permanent residents — green card holders — were covered under the travel ban. Eventually, the White House attempted to settle the issue with a “clarification” memo from White House counsel Don McGahn concluding that the ban does not apply to green card holders.
It wasn't until the next Friday, Feb. 3, when a judge sided with the administration. US District Judge Nathaniel Gorton denied a request to renew a temporary restraining order previously issued by another judge in the federal court in Massachusetts or grant a preliminary injunction.
Hours later, though, in Seattle, a different federal judge — US District Judge James Robart — issued the broadest ruling yet, halting enforcement of all of the major parts of the refugee and travel bans under the order.
The ruling effectively shut down the ban, leading to statements of compliance from the Department of Homeland Security and State Department — but also leading to the first of several pointed attacks from the Trump administration on Robart, who he referred to in one tweet as a “so-called judge.”
The administration appealed, asking the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to put Robart's order on hold while the administration appealed the merits of the district court's ruling. After holding arguments on Feb. 7, the appeals court sided with the challengers — the states of Washington and Minnesota — in a ruling handed down on Feb. 9.
While questions remained about whether the full court of appeals would reconsider that ruling, Trump announced on Feb. 16 that a new version of the order would be coming the week of Feb. 20. That was delayed until last week, but then, shortly after Trump's address to Congress, White House officials said the rollout would be delayed. (This coincided with news that Attorney General Jeff Sessions' previously unmentioned meetings with the Russian ambassador to the US — news that led to his recusal on related matters.)
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