Trump’s immigration ban derailed : Federal court halts deportation

A federal court has granted an emergency stay blocking the deportation of migrants detained at airports around the United States due to Donald Trump’s immigration ban.

The federal court for the Eastern District of New York issued the stay Saturday evening after only two of 12 refugees held at JFK airport were released, after 14 and 24 hours respectively. The ACLU had filed a petition on their behalf, but the stay is effective nationwide. Under the stay, none of the travellers held at airports across the nation can be sent back. However, the measure doesn’t mean they have to be allowed into the country - leaving them in a grey area.

Earlier on Saturday, Donald Trump defended his new immigration measures, which prompted outrage as migrants were barred from entering the United States, including families of refugees and Ivy League students.

The president denied that his executive order, which bars refugees and citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the US, was a Muslim ban.

He maintained that the ban was ‘working very nicely’ while chaos broke out in airports as migrants were stopped and some non-American citizens realized they were now barred from the country where they were studying or had lived, perhaps for years.

Trump’s comments came as migrants around the country were detained in airports because they arrived just after the executive order was signed.

A senior Homeland Security official told Reuters that roughly 375 travellers affected by the order. Out of the 375, 109 were in transit to the US and denied entry. Another 173 people were stopped by airlines from boarding an aircraft to the US. An additional 81 travellers with green cards or special immigrant visas received waivers.

‘It’s not a Muslim ban, but we are totally prepared,’ Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Saturday afternoon, according to The Hill. 

‘It’s working out very nicely. You see it in the airports, you see it all over. It’s working out very nicely and we are going to have a very, very strict ban and we are going to have extreme vetting, which we should have had in this country for many years.’
DAILY MAIL, 29th JANUARY, 2017