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Nearly 2,000 people were stopped in 9 days under Trump's travel ban — and almost all of them were legal US residents

As it turns out, President Donald Trump's travel ban affected mostly people who had already been living in the US.

  • The travel ban put forward by President Donald Trump at the beginning of last year via executive order led to 1,903 people being stopped by customs agents.
  • The majority of them were legal residents of the US.
  • While a federal judge quickly blocked that travel ban, Trump later issued two other travel bans, the second of which has been allowed to go forward by the Supreme Court.

President Donald Trump's first travel ban caused 1,903 people to be stopped during the nine days it was enforced in early 2017, according to a newly public document, BuzzFeed reported on Saturday.

The document, which was released under a Freedom of Information Act request, shows that most of the people who were stopped, 1,457 of them, were legal permanent residents of the US. Of those who were not permanent residents, 134 withdrew their entry request, which most likely means they had to leave the country.

Trump abruptly introduced the travel ban with an executive order in his first month in office, and it suspended the US visas of people from seven majority-Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa. A judge halted the ban in early February of last year, placing a temporary restraining order on its enforcement nationwide.

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While the Department of Homeland Security had initially said legal permanent residents were not included as part of the travel ban, the White House overruled the department and said it would review their entry on a case-by-case basis.

In addition to people being stopped at airports and border crossings, 10 people were reportedly detained aboard a boat in American waters.

Trump has tried several times to reframe the ban but has been met with legal challenges each time. A second, narrower travel ban was also blocked last year, but a third travel ban, issued in September, was allowed to move forward by the Supreme Court. Even this travel ban is still under legal consideration, however, and the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on it this month, according to BuzzFeed.

Several federal courts have declared this third travel ban unconstitutional, and a federal appeals court joined the chorus of opposition in February.

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