On March 6, 2017, President Donald Trump released an executive order in which he rescinded and modified the controversial Executive Order 13769, his travel ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries. This new executive order is considerably more limited than the previous iteration signed on January 27. Most importantly, the order now only applies to people seeking new visas; visas that had already been approved as of the signing of Executive Order 13769, and the permanent residency status of those who hold passports from the banned countries, will be considered valid. In the implementation of Executive Order 13769, hundreds of people with valid visas and permanent residency status were barred from re-entering the country and either detained at airports or returned to their country of origin, leading to widespread protests at airports around the country. This aspect of the order underwent particular scrutiny by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals when that court decided to uphold a temporary restraining order from a district court barring implementation of the order until it had been properly adjudicated.
While the 120-day ban on refugees entering the United States still remains a part of the order, as does the 90-day ban on visa issuance to the listed countries, the new order removes Iraq from the blacklisted countries, leaving Syria, Yemen, Iran, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan. The inclusion of Iraq, whose government is a U.S. ally in the fight against the Islamic State, drew considerable criticism, and was used as a basis for the claim that the travel ban was intended to target Muslim immigrants rather than being driven by the political situation in the listed countries. Additionally, dual nationals whose citizenship includes one of the countries impacted by the ban will no longer be barred from seeking U.S. visas.
It remains to be seen whether the modifications to the ban will allow it to pass muster with the courts. While the new order resolves many of the individual concerns the Ninth Circuit had with the previous order, including a clarification of the status of permanent residents and current visa holders (whom the court decided had clear constitutional due process rights on which the previous order impinged), it does not resolve the fundamental question regarding whether this order, immutably by its character, amounts to a Muslim ban.
The full text of the revised order can be found here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/03/06/executive-order-protecting-nation-foreign-terrorist-entry-united-states.
Leave a Reply