Tens of thousands of visas revoked by Trump's travel ban
President Trump’s immigration order has effectively revoked more than 100,000 visas since it was signed into law last Friday, according to a Justice Department lawyer.
The number was revealed during a court case challenging Mr. Trump’s travel ban, which ground to a halt the U.S. refugee program and also prohibited entry to the U.S. of citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries.
Justice Department lawyer Erez Reuveni said during a hearing in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia that more than 100,000 visas had been revoked because of that order, the Associated Press reported Friday. The hearing was part of efforts to mount a legal challenge to the Trump administration’s ban.
But there’s been some dispute even among agencies in the executive branch about the total number affected by the ban.
According to a State Department official, for instance, that number is significantly smaller.
“Fewer than 60,000 individuals’ visas were provisionally revoked to comply with the Executive Order,” said Will Cocks, a spokesperson for the department’s bureau of consular affairs. That’s out of about 11 million immigrant and non-immigrant visas in the 2015 fiscal year, Cocks said.
In a tweet earlier this week, Mr. Trump said only 109 were “detained and held for questioning” at U.S. airports:
Only 109 people out of 325,000 were detained and held for questioning. Big problems at airports were caused by Delta computer outage,.....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 30, 2017
That count, however, does not take into consideration all travelers with valid visas who never arrived at ports of entry into the U.S.
The ban also does not affect visa holders currently in the U.S., though if those people were to leave and attempt to re-enter the country, they could be barred from doing so.
CBS News’ Kylie Atwood contributed to this report.