As per Donald Trumps order, the US authorities wasted no time halting Muslim arrivals, detaining travelers arriving at American airports within hours of the US president signing the tough new measures, media reports said Saturday.
It was reported that airport
as early as Friday night began detaining travelers, some of whom already had been aboard their flights when Trump announced his executive order closing America’s borders to refugees.
Trump’s order suspends entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days and indefinitely halts the admission of refugees from Syria.
It also bans entry into the United States from travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries — Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen — for 90 days.
The order paved the way for what Trump has pledged will be “extreme vetting” of visa applicants’ backgrounds — with some exceptions made for members of “religious minorities,” a caveat many see as a way to apply favorable treatment to Christians from majority Muslim states.
The move makes good on one of Trump’s most controversial campaign promises, when he vowed to stem immigration from various Muslim countries which he insists pose a terror threat to the United States, and to subject future arrivals to “extreme vetting.”
Detentions have been met with early legal challenges, as lawyers representing two Iraqi refugees being held at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport filed a court appeal for their release, alleging that the two travelers were being unlawfully detained.
