Trump's executive order on immigration: What we know and what we don't

President Trump’s executive order on immigration indefinitely barred Syrian refugees from entering the United States, suspended all refugee admissions for 120 days and blocked citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, refugees or otherwise, from entering the United States for 90 days: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The order unleashed chaos on the immigration system and in airports in the United States and overseas, and prompted protests and legal action.

Here is a quick guide to what we know and what we don’t know about the order.

What We Know

The executive order was signed at 4:42 p.m. Eastern on Friday. The full text can be found here.

The order does not affect naturalized United States citizens from the seven named countries.

After the order was signed, students, visitors and green-card-holding legal permanent United States residents from the seven countries — and refugees from around the world — were stopped at airports in the United States and abroad, including Cairo, Dubai and Istanbul. Some were blocked from entering the United States and were sent back overseas.

Thousands of people protested the executive order in cities across the country on Saturday, many of them at airports. Those protests continued on Sunday, and a large rally was held outside the White House.

On Saturday night, a federal judge in Brooklyn blocked part of Mr. Trump’s order, saying that refugees and others being held at airports across the United States should not be sent back to their home countries. But the judge stopped short of letting them into the country or issuing a broader ruling on the constitutionality of Mr. Trump’s actions.

Federal judges in three states — Massachusetts, Virginia and Washington — soon issued similar rulings to stop the government from removing refugees and others with valid visas. The judge in Massachusetts also said the government could not detain the travelers.

On Sunday morning, the Department of Homeland Security said it would comply with the rulings while it continued to enforce all of the president’s executive orders. “Prohibited travel will remain prohibited,” it said in a statement.

Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, said on Sunday that green card holders from the seven banned countries would not be prevented from returning to the United States “going forward.” That appeared to be a reversal from one of the order’s key components.

Mr. Priebus also said that border agents had “discretionary authority” to subject any travelers, including American citizens, to additional questioning and scrutiny if they had been to any of the seven countries mentioned in the executive order.

United States Customs and Border Protection instructed airlines to stop passengers from the banned countries from boarding flights and to remove any who had already done so. Airline crew members from the seven named countries were also barred from the United States, it said.

An official message was sent to American diplomatic posts around the world instructing them to immediately stop visa interviews for citizens of the seven banned countries and to halt the processing or printing of any pending visas.

The order was widely condemned by Democrats, religious groups, business leaders, immigration policy experts, academics and others, but was praised by some Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, and supporters of Mr. Trump.

What We Don’t Know

It was not clear on Sunday how consistently airport officials across the country were complying with the court rulings that partly blocked Mr. Trump’s executive order.

Application of the order appeared to be uneven on Saturday, and it was unclear what criteria were being used to decide whether a detainee should be admitted to the United States.

Officials did not clarify what criteria had been used on Saturday to determine whether a green card holder from one of the banned countries would receive a waiver from the order. The executive order said only that a waiver could be granted when it was deemed “in the national interest.”

Mr. Priebus’s statements on Sunday morning did little to clarify how the executive order would be interpreted and carried out in the days and weeks ahead, in particular how border agents will exercise their “discretionary authority.”

The process by which this executive order was prepared is also unclear. The White House said the State Department and Department of Homeland Security had been involved in preparing it for several weeks, but multiple officials at both agencies denied that claim.

Two officials said leaders of Customs and Border Protection and Citizenship and Immigration Services — the two agencies most directly affected by the order — and other agencies had been briefed on the new policy over the phone around the time that Mr. Trump signed it on Friday.
© 2017 The New York Times News Service