Trump eases up on travel ban with new executive order The new directive includes significant concessions after the courts halted Trump's first controversial order.

President Donald Trump on Monday retreated behind closed doors as he re-issued his travel ban executive order with significant concessions adopted after his first directive was halted by a firestorm of controversy and a fusillade of legal actions.

The new order exempts existing visa holders from travel limits and removes Iraq from the list of seven Muslim-majority countries whose citizens Trump barred from entering the U.S. in a hastily signed and chaotically implemented order issued just a week after he took office.


Reporters and press photographers were excluded as Trump signed the new directive Monday, although the White House released a photo on social media. Trump dispatched three members of his Cabinet officials to tout the new ban at a brief appearance before journalists a few blocks away, although no questions were taken there either.

"It is the president’s solemn duty to protect the American people and with this order, President Trump is exercising his authority to keep our people safe," Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared.

"Today's executive order...will make America more secure and address long overdue concerns about the security of our immigration system," Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly added. "We must undertake a rigorous review and are undertaking a rigorous review of our immigration vetting programs to increase our confidence in the decisions we make relative to visitors and immigrants that travel to the United States. We cannot risk the prospect of malevolent actors using our immigration system to take American lives."

Many of the changes are designed to help the new order avoid the fate of Trump’s first directive, which was effectively blocked by a series of court rulings.

The new order will put a 90-day hold on issuance of visas to citizens of six countries: Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. It also stops refugee admissions worldwide for 120 days.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Justice Department lawyers will vigorously defend the new order, which he insisted is well within Trump's authority.

"The Department of Justice believes that this executive order, just as the first executive order, is a lawful and proper exercise of presidential authority," Sessions said at the joint appearance with Tillerson and Kelly.

The revised directive also removes language that appeared to give priority to Christian refugees applying from predominantly Muslim countries. That passage was part of what courts seized on to conclude that Trump’s original order was a thinly-veiled version of the “Muslim ban” Trump repeatedly discussed on the campaign trail.

“This is not a Muslim ban in any way, shape or form,” a senior Homeland Security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Trump’s fresh order also provides a new assertion aimed to satisfy another concern put forward by judges: that the administration presented no evidence of the threat the original travel ban was supposed to address.

The new directive claims that the FBI is pursuing 300 terrorism-related investigations of individuals admitted to the U.S. as refugees.

“That is not a small number,” the DHS official added. “That’s a tremendous administrative burden of manpower and resources.”

However, officials refused to tell reporters Monday what portion of those 300 investigations involve people who came from the six countries targeted in the new order. In addition, officials declined to detail what proportion of the probes were focused on people who recently entered the U.S. and might have been stopped by more aggressive vetting procedures or individuals who may have entered the country decades ago as children.

“The salient fact is that there are 300 individuals who were admitted and welcomed to the United States through our refugee admissions program who either infiltrated with hostile intent or radicalized after their admission to the United States,” the DHS official said. “Both factors are very problematic.”

Officials also declined to elaborate on how advanced the investigations were. And the assertion that the probes are straining the FBI’s resources also seemed to be in tension with on-the-record statements from FBI Director James Comey who has said publicly that he has the resources needed to investigate people suspected of being inspired by the Islamic State and other terrorist groups.

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Officials from various agencies who spoke with reporters in advance of the release of the new order Monday declined to answer some of the most sensitive questions about Trump’s handling of the revised order, such as why he was not signing the directive publicly and why an order he said was critical to national security was apparently delayed last week so the president could bask in positive reviews of his speech to Congress.

While not conceding any mishandling of the first order, Trump administration officials stressed Monday that the new version was the subject of extensive consultation among government departments. Kelly also said he personally briefed members of Congress so they would not be taken aback by the new directive.

While Republicans such as House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) applauded the measure, Democrats argued that the president’s new executive order was merely a “Muslim ban 2.0,” a term that soon began trending on Twitter.

“A watered down ban is still a ban,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) tweeted. “Americans need to know that this latest Exec Order has absolutely nothing to do with national security. It is still a ban. #MuslimBan2”

His House counterpart, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), added in a statement that the administration’s “repackaging has done nothing to change the immoral, unconstitutional and dangerous goals of their Muslim and refugee ban.”

“This is the same ban, with the same purpose, driven by the same dangerous discrimination that weakens our ability to fight terror,” she said.

Immigrant rights advocates who filed about two dozen lawsuits against the earlier travel ban adopted the same framing, arguing that both the new and old orders are legally flawed and the product of anti-Muslim prejudice.

"The Trump administration has conceded that its original Muslim ban was indefensible. Unfortunately, it has replaced it with a scaled-back version that shares the same fatal flaws," said Omar Jadwat of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is involved in many of the legal challenges. "The only way to actually fix the Muslim ban is not to have a Muslim ban. Instead, President Trump has recommitted himself to religious discrimination, and he can expect continued disapproval from both the courts and the people."

A senior Justice Department official said lawyers will be asking that the roughly two dozen lawsuits filed over the old order be dismissed. However, it was unclear whether judges will go along with that.

The Justice official said lawyers are bracing for new and revamped legal challenges to the new order, but the official would not say whether those attorneys plan to present judges with any factual support for the new directive.

“We will obviously be making the strongest arguments in each case that is brought. We do anticipate challenges. We do not think they will have any merit,” said the Justice official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

Officials also said that judges had exceeded their role in demanding evidence behind the original order and would be doing so again if they ask for similar information on the new one.

“This is not something that the Department of Justice should have to present to a United States district court judge,” a DHS official said.

Iraqi officials angrily protested the inclusion of their country on the original travel ban list. In addition, U.S. military personnel, veterans and many U.S. lawmakers complained to the White House that translators who had risked their lives by serving with U.S. troops were caught up in Trump’s original ban.

Tillerson appeared to allude to that blowback Monday when he publicly paid tribute to Iraq's role in the fight against terrorism.

"Iraq is an important ally in the fight to defeat ISIS," he observed.

Tillerson and other officials argued that Iraq was not being removed from the list for political reasons, but because the Iraqi government had agreed to share more data and intelligence about their citizens with the U.S.

“Iraq is no longer one of those countries because we have received firm commitments from the government of Iraq over the last several weeks since the first executive order was issued about increased cooperation with the United States in terms of information sharing,” a DHS official said. “We have received adequate assurance from the government of Iraq that we will be able to do the kind of vetting a screening of its nationals that the president of the United States has directed.”

Another new feature of the revised order: a 10-day delay to allow coordination before the measure kicks in. That should head off some of the confusion that unfolded in late January, when hundreds of travelers were detained, delayed or effectively expelled from the country in the wake of the first order.

“You should not see any chaos, so to speak, or alleged chaos, at airports,” a Homeland Security official said, apparently tipping his hat to Trump’s assertion that the rollout of the initial travel ban was “perfect.”

“There aren’t going to be folks stopped tonight from coming into the country pursuant to this executive order,” the official added.

Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.