Trump to sign new travel ban order: Iraq not on list, Syrian refugees allowed

US president Donald Trump is poised to sign a revised executive order that will reinstate a ban on immigration from certain Muslim-majority countries and suspend the US refugee program, officials confirmed on Monday.

The new travel ban will block entry to the US for citizens from six of the seven countries named in Trump’s original order, officials at the Department of Homeland Security and state department told reporters on a conference call on Monday.

The move comes after a federal appeals court temporarily halted Trump’s initial travel ban last month and subsequently denied the administration’s request to overturn the decision.

As with the previous order, people from Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Syria and Libya will face a 90-day suspension of visa processing. But Iraq will be removed from the list of countries affected. The inclusion of Iraq in the original order had prompted concerns from the national security community because of the country’s role in fighting terrorism alongside US forces.

The revised order will keep in place a 120-day suspension of the refugee programme, but it will no longer identify Syrian refugees as subject to an indefinite ban. Officials said Syrians would be treated no differently from other refugees seeking asylum in the United States.

Other changes will include an exemption for green card holders, who were swept up in the chaos that resulted from the previous order at airports across the country. Language granting priority to religious minorities for entry has also been scrapped, officials said, while attempting to make the case that the travel ban did not seek to target individuals of any one faith.

“This is not a Muslim ban in any way, shape, or form,” an official told reporters on the call. “There are dozens and hundreds of millions, if not 1-point something billion Muslims who are not subject to this executive order.”

The emphasis, the official said, was on countries where the US lacked “the ability to make adequate screening and vetting determinations for nationals under current procedures.