Over 100,000 visas revoked, judge is told

More than 100,000 visas have been revoked as a result of President Donald Trump's ban on travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries, an attorney for the government said in Alexandria, Va., federal court on Friday.

In Seattle, meanwhile, a U.S. judge on Friday temporarily blocked the ban on travel after Washington state and Minnesota urged a nationwide hold on the order.

The number of visa revocations came out during a hearing in a lawsuit by two Yemeni brothers who arrived at Dulles Airport outside Washington, D.C., last weekend and were quickly put on a return flight to Ethiopia because of the new restrictions.

That figure was immediately disputed by the State Department, which said the number of visas revoked was roughly 60,000. A spokesman said the revocation move has no impact on the legal status of people already in the United States. If those people leave the United States, though, their visas would no longer be valid.

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Immigrant advocates, attorneys and the media have been pushing the Trump administration to offer an accounting of how many were affected by the executive order.

In response to a judge's question, Erez Reuveni of the Justice Department's Office of Immigration Litigation said in U.S. District Court that there were tens of thousands abroad holding visas when Trump signed his order a week ago.

The hearing was focused on Virginia's efforts to join a legal challenge from legal permanent residents.

"Over 100,000 visas were revoked on Friday at 6:30 p.m.," Reuveni told the judge, speaking of Jan. 27.

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Reuveni offered no other details about the group of people. He said he did not know how many people had been detained at the nation's airports because of the order, but it could be 100 to 200. It was not immediately clear how the Justice Department and State Department arrived at different tallies.

Will Cocks, a spokesman for the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs, clarified the figure after the court hearing.

"Fewer than 60,000 individuals' visas were provisionally revoked to comply with the executive order," Cocks said. "We recognize that those individuals are temporarily inconvenienced while we conduct our review under the executive order. To put that number in context, we issued over 11 million immigrant and nonimmigrant visas in fiscal year 2015. As always, national security is our top priority when issuing visas."

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers, said after the hearing that "there is no legal justification to cancel all these visas."

"You could hear the gasps in the courtroom when he said that," Sandoval-Moshenberg added. "It's more than 100,000 lives turned upside down. For every person not being allowed into the United States right now, there are family members and other people affected by that."

Restraining Order

In Seattle, U.S. District Judge James Robart ruled that the states had standing to challenge Trump's order, a conclusion that government lawyers disputed, and said the states showed their case was likely to succeed.

"The state has met its burden in demonstrating immediate and irreparable injury," Robart said. "This TRO [temporary restraining order] is granted on a nationwide basis."

White House spokesman Sean Spicer released a statement late Friday saying the government "will file an emergency stay of this outrageous order and defend the executive order of the President, which we believe is lawful and appropriate." Soon after, the White House sent out a new statement that removed the word "outrageous."

"The president's order is intended to protect the homeland and he has the constitutional authority and responsibility to protect the American people," the statement said.

Trump's order last week sparked protests nationwide and confusion at airports as some travelers were detained. The White House has argued that the president's order will make the country safer.

Washington became the first state to sue over the order that temporarily bans travel for people from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen and suspends the U.S. refugee program.

Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said this week that the travel ban significantly harms residents and effectively mandates discrimination. Minnesota joined the suit two days later.

After the ruling, Ferguson said people from the affected countries can now apply for entry to the U.S.

"Judge Robart's decision, effective immediately ... puts a halt to President Trump's unconstitutional and unlawful executive order," Ferguson said. "The law is a powerful thing -- it has the ability to hold everybody accountable to it, and that includes the president of the United States."

Gillian Christensen, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said the agency doesn't comment on pending litigation.

Judge: 'It Was Chaos'

During the hearing in Virginia, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said she was heartened to see the government was working to return the brothers, Tareq and Ammar Aqel Mohammed Aziz, to the United States and reinstate their visas in exchange for dropping their case. The government appears to be a attempting a similar case-by-case reprieve across the nation.

But Brinkema offered a stern rebuke to the Trump administration in its broader handling of the travel ban. Brinkema said the case had drawn an even larger public outpouring than another high-profile one she handled, the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, conspirator in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"This order was issued quite quickly. It's quite clear that not all the thought went into it that should have gone into it," Brinkema said. "It was chaos."

She said people had relied on their visas as valid and families had expected to be reunited with loved ones. Brinkema said there was no evidence that the travel restrictions were necessary.

She urged the government to work "globally" to resolve all the cases of those affected by the travel ban. Lawsuits have been playing out over individual cases in at least 10 courts across the country.

The Trump administration has argued that the travel ban, issued Jan. 27, is necessary to keep the United States safe from terrorism as it institutes more restrictive vetting on visitors and refugees, but it has drawn protests at airport's nationwide and condemnation from Democrats, many of whom call it a "Muslim ban."

Brinkema allowed the state of Virginia to join the lawsuit. State officials argued in court that more than 350 students from a handful of state universities had been affected by the travel ban, along with professors and other workers.

The officials said they include a Libyan woman from George Mason University who was stuck in Turkey, and an Iranian doctoral student who is unable to travel to the United States to defend his dissertation. Brinkema also ordered the government to turn over a list of Virginia residents who were affected by the ban.

Outside the courthouse, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring said he was "really pleased the judge recognized real harm is happening in Virginia."

Herring's office had also been seeking to hold government officials in contempt for the way they handled travelers from the seven banned countries over the weekend, but Brinkema declined saying she did not know enough Friday to make that determination.

U.S. Wrestlers Banned

In response to the executive order, Iran on Friday banned U.S. wrestlers from an international tournament this month, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Meanwhile, a senior Iranian cleric said his country would continue its missile program despite threats from the Trump administration that it was preparing to levy new sanctions.

The news agency quoted Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi as saying a special committee reviewed the case of the U.S. team for the freestyle World Cup, and "eventually the visit ... was opposed." The competition, one of the sport's most prestigious events, is set for Feb. 16-17 in the western Iranian city of Kermanshah.

USA Wrestling, the sport's domestic governing body, said in a statement it hasn't officially been told it won't be allowed to compete. The group added that if that is the case, USA Wrestling is "extremely disappointed" in what it calls an "unacceptable situation."

"Wrestling is about competition and goodwill through sport, and is no place for politics," the federation said.

U.S. freestyle wrestlers have competed in Iran since the 1998 Takhti Cup in Tehran, which followed an absence of nearly 20 years. Since then, Americans have attended Iran-hosted wrestling competitions 15 times. The American athletes were warmly welcomed by Iranian spectators, and sport centers were packed.

The Iranians have made 16 visits to the U.S. as guests of USA Wrestling since the 1990s. The 2018 freestyle World Cup will be in Iowa City, Iowa.

Information for this article was contributed by Justin Jouvenal, Rachel Weiner and Ann E. Marimow of The Washington Post; by Alicia A. Caldwell, Nasser Karimi and Luke Meredith of The Associated Press; and by Nicholas Kulish, Caitlin Dickerson and Gardiner Harris of The New York Times.

A Section on 02/04/2017