Trump's abrupt immigration ban sowed confusion at airports,NYT says Ban Is Cowardly and Dangerous

U.S. President Donald Trump's decision on Friday to ban people entering from several Muslim majority countries has triggered mixed reactions. A federal judge has blocked the deportation of people held at U.S. airports under President Donald Trump's immigration ban. The ruling presents the first legal challenge to the executive order signed by Trump. Citizens from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yeman are affected.

There is something peculiar about this list. The draft of the executive order begins by citing 9/11 as a failure of the "visa-issuance process". It blames the state department for preventing "counselor officers from properly scrutinizing the visa applications of several of the 19 foreign nationals who went on to murder 3000 Americans."

The overwhelming majority of those individuals were from Saudi Arabia, yet, Saudi Arabia is not on the list. Furthermore, when it comes to "homegrown terrorism" of all the Muslims accused, charged, convicted and killed, some of them are from these seven countries in Trump's list and some are not, some are immigrants and some are American citizens, and a number of them have been entrapped by federal law-enforcement agencies. This either means that the list needs to be much longer or there is something more than national security concerns at play.

'TIP OF THE SPEAR'

Several Democratic governors said they were examining whether they could launch legal challenges, and other groups eyed a constitutional challenge claiming religious discrimination.

"I don't think anyone is going to take this lying down," said Cleveland immigration lawyer David Leopold. "This is the tip of the spear and more litigation is coming."

The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

The Department of Homeland Security said the order would stay in place.

"No foreign national in a foreign land, without ties to the United States, has any unfettered right to demand entry into the United States," the department statement said.

Mark Krikorian, the director of the conservative Center for Immigration Studies, called lawsuits challenging the order "last ditch efforts" that would only apply to a few individuals, and he said a broader constitutional argument would be hard to win.

"The first amendment doesn't apply to foreigners living abroad. The law explicitly says the president can exclude any person or class of people he wants," Krikorian said.

Some leaders from the U.S. technology industry, a major employer of foreign workers, issued warnings to their staff and called the order immoral and un-American.

"This ban will impact many innocent people," said Travis Kalanick, chief executive of Uber Technologies Inc UBER.UL, who said he would raise the issue at a White House meeting on Friday.

Arab travelers in the Middle East and North Africa said the order was humiliating and discriminatory. Iran vowed to retaliate.

Sudan called the action "very unfortunate" after Washington lifted sanctions on the country just weeks ago for cooperation on combating terrorism. A Yemeni official expressed dismay at the ban.

Iraq's former ambassador to the United States, Lukman Faily, told Reuters that Trump's ban was unfair to a country that itself has been a victim of terror attacks, and could backfire.

"We have a strong partnership with U.S., more so in the urgent fight against terrorism. This ban move will not help, and people will start questioning the bond of this partnership, Faily said.

Allies in the United Kingdom, France and Germany were critical. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted a photo of himself welcoming Syrian refugees.

GREEN CARD CONFUSION

Confusion abounded at airports as immigration and customs officials struggled to interpret the new rules. Some legal residents with green cards who were in the air when the order was issued were detained at airports upon arrival.

However, senior administration officials said it would have been "reckless" to broadcast details of the order in advance.

Other officials said green card holders from the affected countries would require extra screening and would be cleared on a case-by-case basis.

Airlines were blindsided and some cabin crew were barred from entering the country.

Travelers were handled differently at different points of entry and immigration lawyers advised clients to change their destination to the more lenient airports, said Houston immigration lawyer Mana Yegani.

At Chicago O’Hare International Airport, brothers Bardia and Ayden Noohi waited for four hours for their father Kasra Noohi - who has an Iranian passport and a U.S. green card - to be allowed through.

They knew Trump had pledged tougher rules but did not expect the problems. "I didn’t think he’d actually do it," Bardia Noohi, 32, said. "A lot of politicians just talk."

Thousands of refugees seeking entry were thrown into limbo. Melanie Nezer of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society said she knew of roughly 2,000 who were booked to come to the United States next week.

Trump's order indefinitely bans refugees from Syria. In a television interview, he said he would seek to prioritize Christian refugees fleeing the war-torn country.

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were not consulted on the action and in some cases only learned the details as they were made public.

At the State Department, a senior official said lawyers were working to interpret the executive order, which allows entry to people affected by the order when it is in the "national interest."

However, a federal law enforcement official said: "It's unclear at this point what the threshold of national interest is."

Reuters