WASHINGTON: The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said on Saturday it had suspended the implementation of the ban on travellers from seven Muslim countries, even as President Donald Trump vowed to get a court order that had led to the suspension overturned.

“In accordance with the judge’s ruling, DHS has suspended any and all actions implementing the affected sections of the Executive Order,” said Gillian Christensen, the department’s acting press secretary.

On Friday night, Judge James Robart, who presides over a federal court in Washington state, suspended President Trump’s executive order entitled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States”.

Iran defies new sanctions, holds military exercise

The suspension irked President Trump who blasted the judge, a George W. Bush appointee, for his decision to halt his immigration order nationwide.

“The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned”, the president tweeted.

“When a country is no longer able to say who can, and who cannot, come in and out, especially for reasons of safety and security — big trouble!”

But the president’s determination to get the order overturned could not prevent the DHS from enforcing the suspension. The department announced that it was also suspending the passenger system rules that flag travellers for operational action subject to the executive order.

Ms Christensen said in her statement that the department would resume inspections of travellers as it did prior to the signing of the executive order.

The executive order barred citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the United States for 90 days, all refugees for 120 days and indefinitely halted refugees from Syria.

A State Department official told reporters that they also had reversed the cancellation of visas revoked after the executive order. The visas that have already been marked and stamped as cancelled, however, could not be reversed, the department added. The department had revoked about 60,000 visas.

The US Customs and Border Protection said it had already alerted airlines that those previously stopped from boarding planes would be admitted in the US if they had valid visas.

The White House first called the judge’s order “outrageous” and then dropped that word minutes later in a second statement.

The White House also reproduced the text of a law that authorised the president to issue such orders. “Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or non-immigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate,” the law states.

Judge Robart, however, said he was acting in a lawsuit from Washington and Minnesota states seeking to stop the implementation of the executive order. He said the states had “met their burden of demonstrating” that those affected by the executive order would “face immediate and irreparable injury” if the order was implemented and they were returned to their home countries.

The judge also noted that the ban would adversely affect residents in areas of education, employment and freedom to travel.

‘Roaring missiles’

Also on Saturday, commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Tehran would use its missiles if its security came under threat, as the elite force defied new US sanctions on its missile programme by holding a military exercise, the Reuters news agency said.

Tensions between Tehran and Washington have risen since a recent Iranian ballistic missile test which prompted Mr Trump’s administration to impose sanctions on individuals and entities linked to the Guards.

“We are working day and night to protect Iran’s security,” head of Revolutionary Guards’ aerospace unit, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.

“If we see smallest misstep from the enemies, our roaring missiles will fall on their heads,” he added.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards is holding the military exercise in Semnan province to test missile and radar systems and to “showcase the power of Iran’s revolution and to dismiss the sanctions”, according to the force’s website.

Dismissing Mr Trump’s comments that “nothing is off the table” in dealing with Tehran, the commander of Iran’s ground forces said that the Islamic Republic had been hearing such threats since its 1979 revolution.

Iranian state news agencies reported that home-made missile systems, radars, command and control centres, and cyber warfare systems would be tested in the drill.

Tehran confirmed on Wednesday that it had test-fired a new ballistic missile, but said the test did not breach the Islamic Republic’s nuclear agreement with world powers or a UN Security Council resolution endorsing the pact.

Iran has test-fired several ballistic missiles since the nuclear deal in 2015, but the latest test was the first since Mr Trump entered the White House.

Published in Dawn, February 5th, 2017