WASHINGTON ― The Trump administration provisionally revoked tens of thousands of visas as part of its ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries, a government lawyer said in court on Friday.
The revelation caused shockwaves on Twitter, but the State Department actually confirmed earlier this week that it had provisionally revoked most visas held by people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
State Department officials said later Friday that fewer than 60,000 individuals’ visas were provisionally revoked as a result of the order. “To put that number in context, we issued over 11 million immigrant and non-immigrant visas in fiscal year 2015,” a spokesman for the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs told The Huffington Post.
The visa revocations are the State Department’s method of enforcing President Donald Trump’s executive order. With exceptions for legal permanent residents and some others, people from the seven countries cannot enter the U.S., and those already here can’t leave and come back.
Those currently in the U.S. on revoked visas will still be allowed to live in the U.S. for the term of their visa and do the things they were previously authorized to do, such as working or attending school, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman told HuffPost.
Unless they violate the terms of their initial visa, they will not be at risk of deportation. But they can’t leave and come back while the order is in effect, the spokeswoman said.
Visas belonging to people from the seven countries were “provisionally revoked, meaning that that is something that could be reversed,” when the temporary ban on travelers from the seven countries expires on April 27, a State Department official told HuffPost on Friday.
Although it’s not an expansion of Trump’s order, the government lawyer’s statement on Friday illustrates the enormous effect the president’s measure has. More than 200 million citizens from the seven countries are barred from entering the U.S. for at least 90 days, with very few exceptions.
The ban also hurts 60,000 refugees whom the U.S. planned to resettle but now will not, because Trump’s order cut admission goals for refugees. It also halts all refugee resettlement for 120 days and Syrian refugee resettlement indefinitely, leaving tens of thousands of people in refugee camps.
Only legal permanent residents and Iraqis with Special Immigrant Visas were granted exceptions to Trump’s ban on travelers from the seven countries.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
