President Donald Trump on Sunday defended his executive order barring refugees and some legal immigrants from entering the United States, even as a top Cabinet official walked back part of the measure — signaling confusion and fissures within the new administration.

“America is a proud nation of immigrants and we will continue to show compassion to those fleeing oppression, but we will do so while protecting our own citizens and border,” Trump said in an afternoon statement that also cited what he described as precedent set by former President Barack Obama. “To be clear, this is not a Muslim ban, as the media is falsely reporting. This is not about religion — this is about terror and keeping our country safe."


Trump — who also took the time Sunday to accuse Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham of “looking to start World War III” — and his aides struggled to stay on message as protests spread and global outrage grew over the executive order. The directive effectively bars entry to the United States by people ranging from Iraqi translators to Syrian refugees to many international college students. It initially was said to apply to legal U.S. permanent residents — so-called green card holders — as well as many foreigners with multiple nationalities.

Conflicting interpretations spurred Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to clarify that green card holders were indeed exempt from Trump's broad order.

"In applying the provisions of the president's executive order, I hereby deem the entry of lawful permanent residents to be in the national interest," Kelly said in a statement Sunday evening. Some permanent residents were caught up in the weekend's confusion as they attempted to return from overseas visits.

Thousands gathered outside the White House to demand Trump rescind the order — one of many protests nationwide. Prominent Republicans and foreign leaders chided Trump, warning that the order could backfire by inspiring terrorists. Democrats lunged for the political opening, vowing legislation to repeal the order and hinting at lawsuits filed by state attorneys general. Meanwhile, a string of rulings from judges halted the deportation of travelers caught in the drama, but also bewildered U.S. officials unsure how to enforce Trump’s order.

The developments underscore the haphazard approach the Trump administration has taken toward using its political power. Trump issued the order Friday with little notice to or input from the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department or other agencies critical to implementing it, according to multiple sources. The order's complexity left administration lawyers scrambling to interpret it as advocacy groups filed lawsuits.

Trump did not appear moved by the chaos.

In his statement, he asserted that Obama had “banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months” in 2011. Actually, the Obama administration, reacting to intelligence indicating some refugees may have had terrorist ties, had instituted additional security checks, severely slowing down the visa issuance process. Trump also noted that the seven countries targeted by his order were also listed by Obama as potential terror sources.

Early Sunday, Trump tweeted: "Our country needs strong borders and extreme vetting, NOW. Look what is happening all over Europe and, indeed, the world — a horrible mess!" Later in the morning, he sent out another tweet: "Christians in the Middle-East have been executed in large numbers. We cannot allow this horror to continue!"

On Sunday evening, a senior administration official said “the guidance from the beginning” was that legal U.S. permanent residents were exempt from the executive order. He denied reports that the White House had overruled Homeland Security officials in deciding that legal permanent residents were subject to additional vetting before they would be allowed back inside the United States. But the official acknowledged that some 170 legal permanent residents caught up in the drama have had to apply for waivers to be allowed back in, though he stressed that all received the waivers.

“Some of the confusion stems from the semantic debate about the meaning of the word exemption,” the official told reporters. “Every false, misleading, inaccurate, hyperventilating, confused, misguided or other kind of report again covers a fractional marginal minuscule percentage of travelers to our airports on any given day.

“It really is a massive success story in terms of implementation on every single level,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Opponents of the executive order bristled at the notion that just because a small number of people were affected that it didn’t matter.

Ibrahim Lutfi and his relatives are natives of Sudan. Lutfi said his nephew, Ali Nadeeb, is a diabetic who has been in a coma at Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C. Ali’s mother planned to fly to the U.S. from Qatar to visit her son, but she was not allowed to board the plane despite having obtained a proper visitor’s visa, said Lutfi, who added that he became a U.S. citizen eight years ago. On Sunday, he joined hundreds of people protesting the Trump order at Dulles International Airport near Washington.

"It's her only son," Lutfi said, holding a sign with a picture of a smiling Ali alongside a second image of him in a hospital bed.

Trump's executive order, issued Friday, has many elements, but its main features include an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees, a pause for all refugee admissions to the United States, and the temporary suspension of all visa holders from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Libya.

In his Sunday afternoon statement, Trump pointed out that more than 40 Muslim-majority countries were not singled out in the order. He also noted that the suspension of entries from those countries was temporary until the administration undertook a review and determined within 90 days that the safeguards involved in screening those travelers were strong enough.

But Trump failed to mention that the conditions he has set in his executive order may not be able to be met by some or possibly all of those countries. The president wants, for instance, for the countries to share information with the U.S. to help it vet travelers. But some of the countries are weakly governed, wrecked by war or do not have diplomatic ties with Washington, making it possible their citizens could be indefinitely barred from entering the United States. (U.S. officials have long used other measures to vet citizens of the seven countries.)

U.S. officials also said initially that people with multiple citizenships also are barred from entering the United States if one of their nationalities is from the seven countries. But even that was up for debate, especially as Canada said it was told its dual nationals would not be affected, and British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson announced he’d obtained assurances that U.K. citizens who hold one of the seven countries’ nationalities also were exempt so long as they were not traveling to the United States from one of the seven countries.

Activists gather near the White House to protest President Trump's temporary ban on immigration on Jan. 29. | John Shinkle/POLITICO

A Homeland Security official late Sunday said that it all could depend on the passport a traveler decides to use. “[Customs and Border Protection] processes individuals based on the passport they present. In other words, if a French dual national presents their French passport, they are good to go,” the official said. She did not reply to follow-up questions about why the interpretations had changed.

The executive order took immediate effect Friday, and the result was panic and confusion at airports across the country over the weekend as some travelers' legal status changed midflight. Those caught up included an Iraqi who obtained a special U.S. visa for helping American troops, as well as legal U.S. permanent residents returning from trips abroad. Lawyers rushed to airports to help the stranded on Saturday, while protesters did, too, jamming up streets outside major points such as O’Hare International Airport in Chicago and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Demonstrations continued nationwide Sunday. Hundreds of people streamed into Lafayette Square outside the White House, waving flags and signs. "No hate! No fear! Refugees are welcome here!" the crowd shouted. At Dulles, protesters cheered midday Sunday as passengers arrived on a plane from Saudi Arabia. Some of the travelers, whose exact nationalities were unclear, were obviously distressed. As they met their relatives, the crowd shouted "Welcome!" and "Glad you're here!"



On the legal front, U.S. officials tried to nail down the implications of a flurry of rulings from judges across the country that effectively barred customs and border agents from deporting the detained. The initial ruling came from Judge Ann Donnelly, a federal judge in Brooklyn appointed by Obama, on Saturday. Throughout much of the weekend, even as the Department of Homeland Security promised it would abide by the courts’ demands nationwide and let in green card holders, there were reports of border agents saying they would continue to put people on planes leaving the United States.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) pledged that the minority party will propose legislation to overturn Trump’s executive order. Separately, 16 state attorneys general, including those from California and New York, spoke out against the executive order and warned that they will “use all of the tools of our offices to fight this unconstitutional order and preserve our nation’s national security and core values.”

Other Trump aides repeatedly tried to downplay the situation.

“There’s 325,000 people from foreign countries that traveled into the United States yesterday," White House spokesman Sean Spicer told ABC News on Sunday. "There are 109 people that this actually addressed that had come in post-entry from seven countries that we’ve identified."

Spicer further rebutted reports that the administration had blindsided its own agencies, claiming the White House told the "people that needed to know" about the order in advance. Still, he added, much of it was kept secret to prevent a sudden surge of people trying to reach America.

"What we couldn't do was telegraph our position ahead of time to ensure that people flooded in before that happened, before it went into place," he said. "If we had telegraphed that ahead of time, then that would have been a massive security problem."

Although Trump’s insisted the executive order does not amount to a ban on Muslims because many Muslim-majority countries are not included, his chief of staff, Reince Priebus acknowledged to NBC that the number of countries covered by the order could expand. As it stands, nations such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, whose citizens have been involved in major terrorist attacks against America, aren't covered by the order.

Numerous Democratic lawmakers have blasted the order, and Trump's fellow Republicans have started to splinter.

McCain (R-Ariz.) and Graham (R-S.C.) warned in a joint statement that the executive order could bolster recruitment by terrorists who claim the West hates Muslims.

“Ultimately, we fear this executive order will become a self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism,” McCain and Graham said.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas), one of the most hardline members of Congress on immigration, praised the order Friday. But by Sunday evening, he said it's "clear adjustments are needed."

"We should not simply turn away individuals who already have lawful U.S. visas or green cards — like those who have risked their lives serving alongside our forces overseas or who call America their home," McCaul said. "In the future, such policy changes should be better coordinated with the agencies implementing them and with Congress to ensure we get it right — and don’t undermine our nation’s credibility while trying to restore it.”

Trump fought back against McCain and Graham in a pair of tweets released around the same time his office issued his statement defending the refugee order.

“The joint statement of former presidential candidates John McCain & Lindsey Graham is wrong - they are sadly weak on immigration. The two...Senators should focus their energies on ISIS, illegal immigration and border security instead of always looking to start World War III,” Trump wrote of two men, who have long disdained him.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to strike a balance in an interview with ABC, insisting that while he opposes religious tests for people entering the country, additional vetting isn't a bad idea.

"We need to remember that some of our best allies in the war against Islamic terrorism are Muslims," the Kentucky Republican added, pointing out that those allies include interpreters in war zones overseas. Trump's order could in particular bar many Iraqi interpreters who've applied to a special U.S. visa program.

Still, Trump's tweet earlier Sunday about Christians undercut some of McConnell's arguments. The president’s executive order makes a point of directing U.S. officials to give priority to religious minorities once the refugee program resumes, and in many cases that implies Christians. But although Christians have been treated viciously in several of the countries affected by the order, many Muslims have, too, especially those in the minority Shiite branch of Islam. In any case, Trump's executive order de facto bars Christians from Syria and beyond; two Syrian Christian families who landed in Philadelphia were sent back to Qatar following the order.

Also chiming in on the debate in the United States were foreign heads of government. Canada's Justin Trudeau tweeted that his country remained open to refugees, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa May criticized the order.

The dismay over the fallout extended even to Hollywood. Oscar-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi is reported to be skipping this year’s awards, for which he is nominated in the foreign language film category for "The Salesman," because he is barred from entering the United States under Trump’s order.

Josh Gerstein, Matthew Nussbaum and Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.