Green card holders won’t be subject to travel ban: White House

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Trump Administration reversed itself Sunday, January 29 on a key element of its executive travel ban from Muslim countries, saying green card holders won’t be prevented from legally returning to the United States, the New York Post reports.

Amid raucous protests at airports due to President Trump’s executive order to temporarily restrict travel from seven Muslim countries, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said legal residents won’t be subject to the ban.

“The executive order doesn’t affect green card holders moving forward,” Priebus told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

But he also said border officials may use their “discretion” to question legal residents and US citizens in the future regarding suspicious travel activity to make sure they are not “up to no good.”

Priebus stood by the presidents executive order saying it was necessary to protect Americans and was rolled out effectively with the awareness of homeland security officials.

“They knew full well what was going on,” Priebus said.

Priebus said “a couple dozen” people remained detained at airports as of Sunday morning.

“The fact of the matter is 325,000 people from foreign countries came into the United States yesterday and 109 people were detained for further questioning, most of those people were moved out,” Priebus said.

“We’ve got a couple dozen more that remain and I would suspect as long as they’re not awful people that they will move through before another half a day today. Perhaps some of these people should be detained further.”

“Apologize for nothing here,” he added.