White House punts new travel order to next week

by Jordan Fabian - 02/22/17 6:11 PM ET

The White House is pushing back the release of a revised executive order on travel and refugees until next week, an official said Wednesday.

No explanation was given for the delay, and it remains unclear how the White House will tweak the travel ban to avoid future legal pitfalls.

“Fundamentally you’re going to have the same basic policy outcome for the country,” White House policy adviser Stephen Miller said on Fox News on Tuesday night.

He said the new order will largely resemble the old one, but that the changes will be “mostly minor technical differences.”

{mosads}Miller later Wednesday stressed the revisions, though minor, will help the policy pass legal muster. He did not provide further details about what the changes will entail, but said they would result in “a new and different executive order.”

“The executive order will be fully responsive to the courts — though any changes are of course very technical and legal in nature, the significance of the changes will be quite substantial,” he said in an email to The Hill.

“Again: any judges reviewing the order will find it wholly and completely responsive.”

President Trump said last Thursday he would unveil a more tailored travel ban this week after his initial directive was blocked by a federal court.

White House officials have been scrambling to draft a new executive order while stressing they are taking steps to ensure a smoother rollout than the last one.

The initial ban blocked travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. for 90 days and suspended refugee resettlement for 120 days. It indefinitely blocked Syrian refugees from entering the country.

Chaos ensued after the ban was handed down on Jan. 27, as hundreds of travelers were stranded at airports around the country amid confusion about whether the policy applied to people in transit and legal permanent residents.

The Department of Homeland Security days later clarified the order did not apply to permanent residents.

But that did not stop a federal judge in Washington from issuing a nationwide restraining order halting the ban, which was later upheld by a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The White House has signaled it intends to continue the legal fight even though Justice Department lawyers said in a court filing the administration planned to rescind the initial order.

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