Executive Order 13769: Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States

One of the most important policy objectives of the Trump campaign and administration was to pass a ban on Muslims entering the country. This is an example of a policy that openly treats people differently based on their religion; by definition, this is religious discrimination, a form of religious persecution motivated by religious bigotry. Trump first stated this policy in 2015 during the Republican primary, reading from his campaign’s statement to a cheering crowd: “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”   This executive order, a travel ban that did not mention Islam by name, was generally understood to fulfill his promise to his supporters; during the signing, Trump actually said “We all know what that means,” indicating that the Executive Order on “foreign terrorist entry” was meant as a Muslim ban. The Order banned the travel into the United States of people from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen, seven Muslim-majority countries, with some exceptions. Despite that the order began by describing “the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when State Department policy prevented consular officers from properly scrutinizing the visa applications of several of the 19 foreign nationals who went on to murder nearly 3,000 Americans”, it did not ban travel from Saudi Arabia or any of the other home countries of the 9/11 hijackers. Trump was also criticized for not including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the U.A.E., Azerbaijan, or Egypt, countries in which the Trump Organization has business interests.

After this order was passed, there were widespread protests in airports, where people attempting to enter the U.S., including people with visas, were being detained and sent back to their nations of origin. The order was blocked from going into effect the day after its passing as part of a suit brought by the ACLU and later nullified when courts ruled it violated a law prohibiting discrimination against immigrants by place of birth. (Interestingly, some border agents refused to cease enforcement of the order for some time after the order was restrained from taking effect.)   One of the reasons these cases were able to occur so quickly was because then-acting Attorney General and Obama-appointee Sally Yates prevented the Department of Justice from defending the government, stating that the policy was based in religious bigotry. Yates was then removed, and Trump passed Executive Order 13775 to change the DOJ succession order so that Dana Boente could be appointed attorney general. Trump’s Executive Order 13787 would later return the succession order to its previous state.

Three months later, Trump signed Executive Order 13780, which did essentially the same thing but allowed travel from Iraq and opened with assessments of the stability of the six countries from which it banned travel. This move mainly functioned to reopen the legal battle over the travel ban with slightly better odds for the administration.

In section 5, this order suspended all refugee admission into the United States for 120 days and cut the yearly number of refugees admitted by 60,000 people. This provision was also prevented from going into effect by the courts, but was included in EO 13780.

Section 4 of this order increases vetting for people entering the U.S., and section 7 orders the fast creation of a system to track the entrances and exits of travelers to the U.S. using biometric data. Section 8 requires an interview for anyone to get an American visa. Section 10 requires Homeland Security to publish yearly data on violence, terrorism, and “honor killings”. Executive Order 13780 totally replaced this Executive Order, so all of these provisions have been replaced with similar, and, in some cases, identical provisions.