Donald Trump faced an unprecedented backlash on Monday over his ban on refugee admission and travel from seven Muslim-majority countries as Barack Obama warned: “American values are at stake.”

It is extremely rare for a former president to pass comment on the actions of his successor. Obama expressed gratitude to George W Bush for refraining from doing so. But the former president also said he would speak out if he felt fundamental American principles were threatened.

The Trump administration is striving to regain its footing after a weekend of chaos, confusion and protest. The travel bans, apparently rushed and without consultation, provoked fierce criticism from politicians, businesses and organisations across the globe.

Obama’s spokesman, Kevin Lewis, said: “Citizens exercising their constitutional right to assemble, organise and have their voices heard by their elected officials is exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake.”

The former president “fundamentally disagrees” with discrimination that targets people based on their religion, Lewis added.

As mass demonstrations and legal challenges mounted, the White House continued to defend the abrupt move, insisting that while 109 travellers had been “inconvenienced” over the weekend, “coming into this country is still a privilege”.



But a draft memo circulated around foreign missions strongly dissented against Trump’s executive order, issued on Friday. “We are better than this ban,” the memo said, arguing that it would backfire, making the US less safe from terrorism, and “stands in opposition to the core American and constitutional values that we, as federal employees, took an oath to uphold.

The draft memo added: “A policy which closes our doors to over 200 million legitimate travelers in the hopes of preventing a small number of travelers who intend to harm Americans from using the visa system to enter the United States will not achieve its aim of making our country safer. Moreover, such a policy runs counter to core American values of nondiscrimination, fair play and extending a warm welcome to foreign visitors and immigrants.”

The memo is intended to be sent through the state department’s “dissent channel”, intended to allow alternative points of view inside the institution. But normally they are confidential and rarely have more than one author. Any memo of public dissent signed by a significant number of US diplomats would be very rare.

The last similar occasion was a dissent memo over the Obama administration’s Syria policy signed by more than 50 diplomats last June. That memo was the culmination of years of fierce debate, while it has taken just days for the Trump White House to trigger an even more ferocious backlash from the nation’s diplomats.

Border agents defy courts on Trump travel ban, congressmen and lawyers say Read more

Trump’s executive order, signed on Friday, shut US borders to people from seven countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen – for 90 days. It also suspended the Syrian refugee programme indefinitely, a move that Doctors Without Borders warned “will effectively keep people trapped in war zones, directly endangering their lives”.

The order was reportedly sped through without prior consultation with John Kelly, the homeland security secretary, or the defence secretary, James Mattis. There appeared to be widespread confusion among authorities over how the bans would be applied to groups such as legal permanent residents. Several federal judges stayed the order in their districts. There were protests at airports across the country and outside the White House and at Trump’s Washington hotel on Sunday.

There was confusion on Monday about whether or not anyone remained in detention at airports following the chaotic scenes that resulted from the order. Advocacy groups said that the US government was not giving them sufficient information to know for sure that no one remained detained. The government had not provided any list of names of travellers held.

Meanwhile, the Council on American–Islamic Relations (Cair) issued a lawsuit claiming the travel ban violated the first amendment of the constitution, which establishes the right to freedom of religion. And Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington, said he was also launching a legal challenge, making Washington the first state to do so.

“The judicial system is adept at protecting the constitution,” Inslee said. “President Trump may have his alternative facts, but alternative facts do not work in a courtroom.” He said the banning of immigrants based their country of citizenship went against state statutes meant to stop discrimination based on place of birth or nationality.

After days under siege from national and global criticism, the White House attempted to mount a public relations counter-offensive. Sean Spicer, the press secretary, claimed that 109 travellers had been temporarily delayed at airports out of a total of 325,000.

“It’s a shame that people were inconvenienced, obviously, but at the end of the day we’re talking a couple of hours,” he told reporters. “Coming into this country is still a privilege. We’re still the greatest country on earth.”

Spicer added: “A hundred and nine were temporarily inconvenienced for the safety of us all. I truly believe it is being blown out of proportion … The system actually worked really well. That’s the takeaway from this. The country is safer for it.”

Spicer also attempted to defend a security decision to detain a young child, insisting: “The point is that you that can go through and nitpick, this individual or this, but that’s why we slow it down a little and to make sure that, if they are a five-year-old, that maybe they’re with their parents and they don’t pose a threat.

“But to assume that just because of someone’s age or gender or whatever that they don’t pose a threat would be misguided and wrong.”

Stephen Miller, a senior policy adviser to Trump and the alleged architect of the policy, went on morning TV to insist that the policy’s implementation had been “orderly” and “efficient”.

Miller, who is also Trump’s principal speechwriter, told CBS’s This Morning: “Any time you do anything hugely successful that challenges a failed orthodoxy, you’re going to see protests. If nobody is disagreeing with what you’re doing, then you’re probably not doing anything that really matters.”

He denied that the policy had been botched. “By any measure I would describe that as efficient, orderly, enormously successful,” Miller said. “We’re going to take the next 30 days to develop a new set of screening protocols.”

The former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani also claimed to have worked on the policy and referred to it explicitly as a “Muslim ban”. On Saturday night, he told Fox News: “So when [Trump] first announced it, he said, ‘Muslim ban.’ He called me up. He said, ‘Put a commission together. Show me the right way to do it legally.’”



Giuliani added: “And what we did was, we focused on, instead of religion, danger – the areas of the world that create danger for us. Which is a factual basis, not a religious basis. Perfectly legal, perfectly sensible. And that’s what the ban is based on. It’s not based on religion. It’s based on places where there are substantial evidence that people are sending terrorists into our country.”

Trump himself used his favoured medium – Twitter – to deny the order was responsible for disarray at airports.

“There is nothing nice about searching for terrorists before they can enter the country,” he posted. “This was a big part of my campaign. Study the world!”

He added: “Big problems at airports were caused by Delta computer outage, protesters and the tears of Senator Schumer.”

Delta Airlines experienced a two-and-a-half-hour shutdown on Sunday night, a problem that caused delays for thousands of passengers but was unrelated to Trump’s executive order.

Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, had become tearful during a press conference on Sunday where he stood alongside refugees and condemned the order as unconstitutional and “un-American”.

Trump mocked him on Monday during remarks after a meeting with small business owners at the White House.

“I notice Chuck Schumer yesterday with fake tears,” he said. “I’m going to ask him who was his acting coach, ’cause I know him very well. I don’t see him as a cryer. If he is, he’s a different man. There’s about a 5% chance his tears were real, but I think they were fake tears.”

The tech workers affected by the travel ban: 'Things are confusing and scary’ Read more

The president also criticised Democrats for holding up some of his cabinet nominations.

“Where was the outrage of the Democrats when all of our companies were fleeing to Mexico and to other places far away and leaving jobs behind?” he said. “Now they’re all coming back. They’re coming back by big numbers.”

It was not clear if Trump’s use of the word “fleeing” was intended to draw comparison with the refugee issue. Schumer and the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, were due to stand alongside immigrants and Muslims outside the supreme court on Monday evening.

Democrats are drafting legislation to overturn the ban. Senator Chris Coons, a member of the Senate foreign relations Committee, told CNN on Monday: “I see it as illegal, unconstitutional and un-American. I don’t think this ban will make us any safer. I frankly think it will be a propaganda bonanza for Isis. It has outraged a number of our close allies on whom we are relying to be our partners on the war on terror, and it has sent the wrong message to our allies around the world about what we stand for as a country.

“Some of the first people caught up in the misguided ban just over the last 48 hours were Iraqi translators who risked their lives for American troops in the war in Iraq, and I think the symbol that sends is a strong one and I look forward to joining others who will be protesting this ban and challenging it both with statutory actions and legal actions.”

The Pentagon is creating a list of Iraqis who have worked alongside the United States which will be passed to agencies responsible for implementing the executive order. “We have been provided the opportunity by the White House to submit names and we are working forward to do that,” the Pentagon spokesman, Capt Jeff Davis, said.

More than a dozen Senate Republicans have opposed the order or expressed concerns. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said in a joint statement that it “sends a signal, intended or not, that America does not want Muslims coming into our country. That is why we fear this executive order may do more to help terrorist recruitment than improve our security.”



Trump was also facing criticism for allowing his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, to attend regular meetings of the White House National Security Council, while the chair of the joint chiefs of staff and the director of national intelligence were told to attend only when deemed necessary.



Spicer insisted on Monday that there had been no change to the structures since the Obama administration.

Trump also said on Monday that he would announce his pick for the vacancy on the supreme court at 8pm on Tuesday. The court has been working with eight justices since the death last year of Justice Antonin Scalia.

Additional reporting by Amber Jamieson in New York