U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly says President Donald Trump is working on a "streamlined" version of his executive order banning travel from seven predominantly Muslim nations
MUNICH: President Donald Trump is working on a “streamlined” version of his executive order banning travel from seven predominantly Muslim nations to iron out the difficulties that landed his first order in the courts, US Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said yesterday.
Speaking on a panel about combating terrorism at the Munich Security Conference, Kelly said Trump’s original order was designed as a “temporary pause” to allow him to “see where our immigration and vetting system has gaps – and gaps it has – that could be exploited.”
Foreign Minister Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa met his Saudi Arabian counterpart Adel Al Jubeir during the conference. They discussed regional peace and security, ways to overcome imminent threats facing the region, and prevention of interference in their affairs.
Shaikh Khalid also met United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East commissioner general Pierre Krenpol, Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende and Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Balbandian.
Kelly said the Trump administration was surprised when US courts blocked it from implementing the executive order and now “the president is contemplating releasing a tighter, more streamlined version” of the travel ban.
Kelly said this next time he will be able to “make sure that there’s no one caught in the system of moving from overseas to our airports.”
Asked whether that meant Trump’s new executive order would allow people with green cards and visas to come into the US, Kelly said “it’s a good assumption.”
But he went on to say that only people with visas who were already in transit would be allowed in. For others, he said, “We will have a short phase-in period to make sure that people on the other end don’t get on airplanes.”
Among the security challenges, Kelly said, was that the US does not have “strong counter-terrorism partnerships” with the countries in question or “robust information on individuals travelling from these countries” to be able to make a good risk assessments before their citizens travelled to the US.
The nations affected by the original ban were Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
Kelly mentioned “seven nations” again yesterday, leading to speculation they will all be included in Trump’s next executive order.
The US needs to “find ways to vet in a more reliable way to satisfy us that the people that are coming to the US are coming for the right reasons,” he said.