Over 1 lakh visas revoked since travel ban imposed in US

Over 1,00,000 visas have been revoked as a result of President Donald Trump's ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, an attorney for the government said today.

The number came out during a hearing in a lawsuit filed by attorneys for two Yemeni brothers who arrived at Dulles International Airport on Saturday and were quickly put on a return flight to Ethiopia in response to the President's executive order.

The government attorney could not say how many people with visas were sent back to their home countries from Dulles in response to the travel ban, the Washington Post reported.

An executive order signed by Trump over the weekend had halted the US refugee programme for 120 days and indefinitely banned all Syrian refugees.

A separate order also suspended all entry from Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Syria on national security grounds.

Meanwhile, Vice President Mike Pence defended Trump’s executive order halting immigration, saying that ‘any fair-minded person’ would understand the directive’s intent.

“Any fair-minded person looking at the President’s action knows that what President Trump has done is essentially imposes a pause on countries that have been compromised by terrorism, so that we can evaluate the screening process and establish an extreme vetting so that people coming into this country don’t represent a threat to our families and to our communities,” Pence was quoted as saying by Fox News.

“It’s an indefinite pause with regard to Syria, but with regard to the other countries, we’re going to be calling on the Department of Homeland Security, all of our team to work together to evaluate how we can continue to go forward with immigration from those countries but not compromise the safety and security of the American people,” he said.

Pence asserted that the ban imposed on seven Muslim-majority countries is not a Muslim ban.

“Clearly, it’s not a Muslim ban. It’s not in any way associated with religion,” he said.

“This president made it clear in this executive order that we are not going to compromise the safety and security of the American people with regard to these seven countries that the Obama administration identified as compromised by terror, that the Congress has identified. We’re taking a pause. We're going to step back and we're going to put safety and security of the American people first,” Pence said in response to a question.

Pence said they are now reviewing the list.

“This list has really garnered around whether the countries that we’re looking at have the internal systems that we can be certain that people are who they say they are,” he said.

“And with regard to other countries, Saudi Arabia being among them, we have confidence that they have the kind of safeguards, the kind of law enforcement, the kind of screening in their country that when a person presents a visa or attempts to come into the United States, that we know they are who they present as,” Pence said.

“The Obama administration and the Congress have identified these seven countries as having systems that have been compromised through strife, through the advent of terrorism, in the case of Syria through civil war, so that we need to step back to make sure that we have the additional safeguards,” Pence said.

Trump has a lot of priorities, but his number one priority is the safety and security of the American people.

“And that’s why this decisive action took place,” he said.

Photograph: Andrew Kelly/Reuters