According to Donald Trump, his crackdown on illegal immigration is exactly what America, ambushed and under siege, has been waiting for. “We’re freeing up towns, actually we’re liberating towns, if you believe we have to do that in the United States of America,” he said in the Cabinet Room Wednesday night, to an assembled crowd of accredited believers. “But we’re doing it and we’re doing it fast.” The self-defined liberator was speaking just 24 hours before the enactment of his latest, greatest act of emancipation. At eight P.M. on Thursday evening, a limited version of his travel ban against foreign visitors from six predominantly Muslim countries will be enforced.

Stuck in the last remaining day of danger, Trump was presumably still feeling a little furtive. But, as he marked his latest victory, he was careful not to let his fears show, issuing a jubilant yet firm celebratory statement. "As president, I cannot allow people into our country who want to do us harm. I want people who can love the United States and all of its citizens, and who will be hardworking and productive.” He finished with an authoritative flourish. “My No. 1 responsibility as commander in chief is to keep the American people safe. Today’s ruling allows me to use an important tool for protecting our nation’s homeland.”

But, predictably, the president's quest to clean up America's mean streets via his still-fictitious wall and long-battled travel ban is not as neat as he would lead listeners to believe. Behind Trump's “clear victory” lingers a murky lack of clarity. Instead of sweepingly passing the ban, the Supreme Court has allowed a revised version to come into action while they are awaiting a wider ruling on its constitutionality, expected in October.

Furthermore, Trump's truncated travel ban comes saddled with an array of complex, convoluted guidelines, issued to American embassies and consulates by the State Department on Wednesday night. The ban, they said, could not be imposed on anyone who had a “a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.” Clearly, a bona fide relationship is not a concrete entity, so amid widespread confusion, the White House sought to define a concept that, by nature, seems fluid.

According to a document obtained by The New York Times, “close family” means “a parent (including parent-in-law), spouse, child, adult son or daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, sibling, whether whole or half. This includes step relationships.” Apparently, however, “close family” does not include “grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, brothers-in-laws and sisters-in-law, fiancés and any other ‘extended’ family members.” A bona fide relationship with a “U.S. entity,” reports the Times, “must be formal, documented, and formed in the ordinary course, rather than for the purpose of evading the E.O.,” or executive order.

It is not obvious how the administration landed upon the new definitions. United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Department of Homeland Security, defines “immediate relatives” as spouses, children under 21, and parents of adult citizens.

The guidelines helpfully explain that someone who has accepted a job offer from a company in the U.S., or perhaps an invitation to speak at an American university, can make it through the border, but a nonprofit group can't select citizens of the affected countries and count them as clients to try and skirt the ban. “Also, a hotel reservation, whether or not paid, would not constitute a bona fide relationship with an entity in the United States."

There is a sort of cosmic congruity to the fact that the rules surrounding Trump’s grim, confused, juddering travel ban are unfolding in consummate chaos. But existential ironies aside, this is a ban that will split up and sever families from the six singled-out countries of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Trump’s freeing up of America is trapping others, and there is not even a faint shadow of liberty in his repeated attempts to push this travel ban through the courts.