Scope

A demonstration at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday to denounce President Donald Trump's executive order that barred citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the US. Associated Press/Marcio Jose Sanchez

Obama did not "ban visas for refugees from Iraq for six months," as Trump said — refugees don't travel on visas. Rather, the Obama administration dramatically slowed the processing of refugee requests and "Special Immigrant Visas," meant for Iraqi interpreters who helped US forces, while it expanded its screening procedures.

During that time, the Obama administration also reexamined 58,000 Iraqi refugees who had already been admitted to the US, according to a 2012 congressional hearing. New Iraqi refugees were continuously admitted throughout the year, albeit at a much slower pace than usual.

According to data from the State Department's Refugee Processing Center, 6,339 Iraqi refugees arrived in the US in 2011 — fewer than half the numbers admitted in 2010 and in 2012.

"While the flow of refugees slowed significantly during the Obama administration's review, refugees continued to be admitted to the United States during that time, and there was not a single month in which no Iraqis arrived here," Jon Finer, who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State John Kerry and was the director of policy planning at the State Department, wrote in Foreign Policy.

Another former Obama administration official, Eric Schwartz, the former assistant secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration, also disputed Trump's comparison between the two policies.

"For several months in 2011, there was a lower level of Iraqi resettlement, as the government implemented certain security enhancements … there was never a point during that period in which Iraqi resettlement was stopped, or banned," Schwartz told The Washington Post.

The 2011 policy targeted a narrow group of individuals: refugees and Special Immigrant Visa applicants from Iraq. In contrast, Trump's order casts a wide net, excluding millions of people across seven countries from nearly every type of available visa.