- Trump has imposed a 90-day ban on entry to the US from seven Muslim majority nations.
US President Donald Trump barred all refugees from entering the United States for four months - and those from war-ravaged Syria indefinitely - declaring the ban necessary to prevent "radical terrorists" from entering the nation.
The Friday order immediately suspended a program that last year resettled to the US roughly 85,000 people displaced by war, political oppression, hunger and religious prejudice. Trump indefinitely blocked all those fleeing Syria, where a civil war has displaced millions of people, and imposed a 90-day ban on entry to the US from seven Muslim majority nations. Those countries are: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.
"We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas," Trump said as he signed the order at the Pentagon. "We only want to admit those into our country who will support our country and love deeply our people."
Will the new visa ban affect Pakistan?
In an interview with ABC News, Trump was asked, "Let me ask you about some of the countries that won't be on the list, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia. Why are we going to allow people to come into this country."
To this, Trump replied, "You're going to see - you're going to see. We're going to have extreme vetting in all cases. And I mean extreme. And we're not letting people in if we think there's even a little chance of some problem."
Speaking of the new regulations, Trump said, "We are excluding certain countries. But for other countries we're gonna have extreme vetting. It's going to be very hard to come in. Right now it's very easy to come in. It's gonna be very, very hard. I don't want terror in this country. You look at what happened in San Bernardino. You look at what happened all over. You look at what happened in the World Trade Center. Okay, I mean, take that as an example."
The undated video shows the President-elect stating his love for Pakistan and even emphasising every word of it.
New procedure of vetting refugees
Trump said the halt in the refugee program was necessary to give government agencies time to develop a stricter vetting system. But the order did spell out what additional steps he wants the Homeland Security and State departments to take.
The US may admit refugees on a case-by-case basis during the freeze, and the government will continue to process requests from people claiming religious persecution, "provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual's country."
In an interview with CBN News, Trump said persecuted Christians would be given priority in applying for refugee status.
"We are going to help them," Trump said. "They've been horribly treated."
The order was signed on Trump's most robust day of national security and foreign policy at the start of his presidency, marked by a meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May and a lengthy phone call with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.
As a candidate, Trump called for a temporary ban on all Muslim immigration to the US. He later shifted his focus to putting in place "extreme vetting" procedures to screen people coming to the US from countries with terrorism ties.
The State Department said the three-month ban in the directive applied to Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen - all Muslim-majority nations.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, said it would file a federal lawsuit Monday challenging the constitutionality of the executive order.
"There is no evidence that refugees - the most thoroughly vetted of all people entering our nation - are a threat to national security," said CAIR National Litigation Director Lena F. Masri. "This is an order that is based on bigotry, not reality."
During the past budget year, the US accepted 84,995 refugees, including 12,587 people from Syria. President Barack Obama had set the refugee limit for this budget year at 110,000.
Trump, according to the executive order, plans to cut that to 50,000. Refugee processing was suspended in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks and restarted months later.
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