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Donald Trump's 'Muslim ban' executive order kicks in, passengers refused entry to US

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New York: President Donald Trump's executive order closing the nation's borders to refugees was put into immediate effect on Friday night (Saturday AEDT). Refugees who were in the air on the way to the United States when the order was signed were stopped and detained at airports.

There were further reports that five Iraqi passengers and one Yemeni had been barred from boarding an EgyptAir flight from Cairo to New York as the US ban on entry of citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries came into force.

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Refugees detained after Trump executive order

Two Iraqis at JFK Airport were prevented from entering the US after President Donald Trump barred travel to the country by citizens of seven Middle Eastern and African nations.

A UN refugee agency spokesman said it was not yet known whether any of the affected passengers had already been granted visas under the US refugee program.

The five Iraqis had arrived in transit from Erbil and were being held at the airport until they could be re-boarded on flights back to Iraq, whereas the Yemeni passenger had arrived at the airport from elsewhere in Cairo, they added.

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Dutch airline KLM also confirmed it had refused passengers carriage to the US on Saturday.

The detentions at US airports, meanwhile, prompted legal challenges as lawyers representing two Iraqi refugees held at New York's Kennedy Airport filed a writ of habeas corpus early on Saturday seeking to have their clients released. At the same time, they filed a motion for class certification, in an effort to represent all refugees and immigrants who they said were being unlawfully detained at ports of entry.

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Amid mounting chaos a US federal judge issued an emergency stay that temporarily blocked the government from sending people out of the country after they have landed at a US airport with valid visas.

The American Civil Liberties Union estimated the stay would affect 100 to 200 people detained at US airports or in transit, but government lawyers could not confirm that number.

Judge Ann Donnelly of the US District Court in New York made the order on Saturday.

Mr Trump's order, which suspends entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days, created a legal limbo for individuals on the way to the United States and panic for families who were awaiting their arrival. The order has also thrown into doubt a US agreement to resettle refugees from Australian detention centres.

The executive order, which Mr Trump said was part of an extreme vetting plan to keep out "radical Islamic terrorists," also established a religious test for refugees from Muslim nations: he ordered that Christians and others from minority religions be granted priority over Muslims.

Mr Trump's order stops the admission of refugees from Syria indefinitely and it bars entry into the United States for 90 days from anyone from seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

Under the ban, Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi, whose film The Salesman has been nominated for an Academy Award, will not be able to attend the Hollywood ceremony next month.

Mr Trump's order will make it virtually impossible for relatives and friends of an estimated one million Iranian-Americans to visit the United States. Many fear the immigration ban will only stoke anti-American sentiment in these countries and damage relationships to fight the threat of terrorism.

"It is basically sending a positive signal to people who hate this country, because now ISIS gets to say: 'See? They don't want you'," said Keith Ellison, who became the first Muslim member of Congress in 2007.

"They get to whip up hate and anti-American sentiment."

Iran hits back with reciprocal ban

Iran announced on Saturday said it would impose a reciprocal ban on US citizens travelling to Iran, calling the US action "offensive".

The country's official Islamic Republic News Agency in a report on Saturday said the executive order was a "visible insult" to Muslims and called it "a gift to extremists". Iran "will reciprocate with legal, consular and political undertakings," according to the report.

The US ban extends to people already holding green cards that have until now made them legal permanent US residents, said Gillian Christensen, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman.

It was unclear how many immigrants and refugees were being held nationwide in the aftermath of the executive order, but the move essentially restricts some green card holders from leaving the US for fear of being barred re-entry

Officials were also stopping travellers with dual Canadian and Iranian citizenship from boarding planes in Canada that were headed the United States, said Mana Yegani, an immigration lawyer in Houston who works with the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

"These are people that are coming in legally. They have jobs here and they have vehicles here," she said. "Just because Trump signed something at 6pm yesterday, things are coming to a crashing halt. It's scary."

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hit back on Twitter with a welcome message to all fleeing persecution.

Immediate legal challenge

Formal legal complaints were filed by a prominent group including the American Civil Liberties Union, the International Refugee Assistance Project at the Urban Justice Centre, the National Immigration Law Centre, Yale Law School's Jerome N Frank Legal Services Organisation and the firm Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton.

The lawyers said that one of the Iraqis detained at Kennedy Airport, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, had worked on behalf of the US government in Iraq for 10 years. The other, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, was coming to the United States to join his wife, who had worked for a US contractor, and young son, the lawyers said.

They said both men were detained at the airport on Friday night after arriving on separate flights. The attorneys said they were not allowed to meet with their clients and there were tense moments as they tried to reach them.

"Who is the person we need to talk to?" asked one of the lawyers, Mark Doss, supervising attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project.

"Mr President," said a Customs and Border Protection agent, who declined to identify himself. "Call Mr Trump."

In the arrivals hall at Terminal 4 of Kennedy Airport, Mr Doss and two other lawyers fought fatigue as they tried to learn the status of their clients on the other side of the security perimeter.

"We've never had an issue once one of our clients was at a port of entry in the United States," Mr Doss said. "To see people being detained indefinitely in the country that's supposed to welcome them is a total shock.

"These are people with valid visas and legitimate refugee claims who have already been determined by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to be admissible and to be allowed to enter the US and now are being unlawfully detained."

A supervisor for Customs and Border Protection at Kennedy Airport declined to comment, referring questions to public affairs officials. Calls to officials in Washington and New York were not returned on Saturday.

Families broken apart

According to the filing, Hameed Khalid Darweesh was granted a special immigrant visa on January 20, the same day as Mr Trump's inauguration. He worked with the United States in Iraq in a variety of jobs as an interpreter, engineer and contractor over the course of roughly a decade.

Mr Darweesh worked as an interpreter for the Army's 101st Airborne Division in Baghdad and Mosul starting shortly after the invasion of Iraq on April 1, 2003. The filing said that he was directly targeted twice for working with the US military.

A husband and father of three, he arrived at Kennedy Airport on Friday evening with his family. Mr Darweesh's wife and children made it through passport control and customs, but agents of Customs and Border Protection stopped and detained him.

He was released from custody on Saturday after almost 19 hours in detention.

Emerging from the airport and speaking to reporters, he mimicked being put in handcuffs with his hands behind his back.

"What I do for this country? They put the cuffs on," Mr Darweesh said. "You know how many soldiers I touch by this hand?"

A infantry officer who worked with Mr Darweesh in 2003 in the Army's 101st Airborne Division said Trump's order was putting US troops in danger as it removed the incentive for people like Mr Darweesh to work with them.

"This is a guy who has done a lot more for this country than most people who were born here," Brandon Friedman told The Washington Post.

Mr Alshawi was supposed to be reunited with his wife, who has been living in Texas. His wife, who asked to be identified by her first initial of D out of concern for her and her family's safety, wiped away tears as she sat on a couch in her sister's house in a Houston suburb early on Saturday.

The woman, a 32-year-old who was born in Iraq, met her husband while both were students at a Baghdad college. The couple has one child, a seven-year-old son, who is in first grade. The boy was asleep in the house at 3am local time on Saturday, oblivious to the fact that his father was in the United States, but under detention and the possible threat of return to Iraq.

Relatives crowded the living room in their pyjamas and slippers, making and receiving phone calls to and from other relatives and the refugee's lawyers. At times, D was so emotional she had trouble speaking about her husband's predicament.

She pulled out her mobile phone and flipped through her pictures while seated on the couch. She wanted to show a reporter a picture she took of her son's letter to Santa Claus.

In November, at a Macy's Santa-letter display at a nearby mall, the boy wrote out his wish: "Dear Santa: Can you bring my Dad from Sweden pls." He has not seen his father in three years.

"I'm really breaking down, because I don't know what to do," she said. "It's not fair."

It is a similar sentiment felt by refugee families abroad who had been days and even hours away from boarding a plane to finally be resettled in the US.

Danielle Drake, from US Together, a refugee settlement agency, pointed out the timing of Mr Trump's controversial order coincided with Holocaust Remembrance Day.

"All those times that people said 'never again,' well, we're doing it again. We're turning people away again," she told local media in Cleveland, Ohio and referring to the rejection of Jewish refugees before World War II.

"Have we not learned from the past?" she said. "It's unreal."

The New York Times, AAP

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