Trump Bars Travelers From Seven Muslim-Majority Countries One Week Into Term, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That A Valid U.S. Visa Still Allowed Its Holder Into The United States

WASHINGTON. Concluding a problem that had quietly persisted at every international terminal in the country, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order on January 27, 2017 barring travelers from seven Muslim-majority nations and suspending the nation's refugee program, resolving the long-standing concern that a person holding a valid United States visa could board an aircraft reasonably confident he would be permitted to step off of it.

The order, signed on a Friday afternoon and effective immediately, suspended entry from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen for 90 days, halted all refugee admissions for 120 days, and barred Syrian refugees indefinitely. Administration officials clarified that the measure was necessary, that it was not a ban, and that it was a ban only in the narrow sense that it prevented certain people from entering the country.

Because the order took effect while travelers were already in the air, customs officers at airports nationwide were able to detain lawful permanent residents, returning doctors, interpreters who had assisted American troops, and at least one five-year-old child, resolving a separate concern that green card holders had grown comfortable assuming the green card worked. As crowds of protesters and volunteer attorneys filled terminal arrival halls through the weekend, the President assessed the rollout from the White House and pronounced it a success.

"It's working out very nicely," Trump told reporters. "You see it at the airports, you see it all over." The remark addressed mounting questions about whether the policy fulfilled a 2015 campaign pledge in which the candidate had 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." Officials stressed that the order was emphatically not that, and noted that the seven nations had been selected on grounds entirely unrelated to the religion practiced by nearly everyone living in them.

Within 24 hours a federal judge had stayed portions of the order, the first of many courts to do so. Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, having concluded that the Department of Justice could not defend the order in court, was spared the burden of trying when she was fired three days into the administration. The White House would go on to issue two further versions of the policy, each narrowed in response to judicial defeat, until a third iteration was upheld by the Supreme Court in June 2018 by a single vote, resolving the concern that the courts might keep noticing.

At press time, the administration confirmed that the nation's borders were now secure against the specific travelers least likely to have ever posed a threat to them.