Homeland Security secretary says new immigration order will protect travelers

MUNICH—President Donald Trump’s revised executive order on immigration will be “more streamlined” than the version being challenged in U.S. courts, with a roll-out plan aimed at ensuring that no one entitled to be in the U.S. is caught up in it while traveling, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said.

It’s a “good assumption” that the new order won’t affect people holding valid visas or green cards, Kelly said, as the administration seeks to avoid both new legal resistance and the chaotic scenes seen at airports last month, when many travelers were caught in limbo in the hours after Trump signed the order.

“I will have opportunity to work a roll-out plan, in particular to make sure that there’s no one, in a sense, caught in the system of moving from overseas to our airports, which happened on our first release,” Kelly told a panel at the Munich Security Conference in Germany Saturday.

Kelly spoke after Trump confirmed at a briefing on Friday that the plan was in the works to address the objections of a federal appeals court that stopped his temporary ban on travel from seven predominantly Muslim nations. He said the new order was expected next week.

Trump’s Justice Department Thursday told the San Francisco-based appeals court that halted enforcement of the original order that a rehearing on the travel ban is no longer warranted because a superseding order is in the works. The new order will almost certainly trigger another round of legal challenges.

The original order barred

Syrian refugees from the U.S. indefinitely, and blocked for 120 days all refugees fleeing their homelands claiming persecution or fear of violence. No citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria or Yemen could enter the U.S. for 90 days. A successful court challenge brought by the states of Washington and Minnesota blocked implementation.

Kelly said the order was just a pause to look into the vetting process in place in the seven countries in question. The measure will have a “phase-in” mechanism “to make sure that people on the other end don’t get on airplanes,” Kelly said.

“This again is just a pause, until we look at a number of countries, seven in particular, and look at their vetting processes, how reliable they are — and I can tell you right now they’re not very reliable—and find ways to vet in a more reliable way,” Kelly said.