Nonprofit leaders who work with immigrants and refugees pledged to carry forward legal challenges against a revised executive order that President Trump signed on Monday temporarily suspending the admissions of all refugees and travel from six Muslim-majority countries.
Legal groups such as the National Immigration Law Center, which joined the American Civil Liberties Union and others in lawsuits against the original executive order, said that many of the key provisions in the updated version are identical.
“The discriminatory Muslim ban 1.0, still discriminatory in 2.0,” Karen Tumlin, legal director of the National Immigration Law Center, said during a call with reporters on Monday. “So from our vantage point, that litigation lives on.”
The new executive order replaces one that the Trump administration issued in January. That earlier version imposed a 90-day travel ban from seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. It also barred refugees from war-torn Syria indefinitely and suspended admissions of all other refugees for 120 days.
The original executive order faced immediate legal challenges, and after a three-judge federal appeals court blocked it in February, the White House promised a new version.
Complications but More Support
The executive orders have complicated matters for many American charities that work overseas.
After the January order, some international aid groups were forced to tell staff members in the countries named in the executive order to stay put and cancel meetings that required travel to the United States. In late January and February, groups including Oxfam reported having to cancel meetings between staff members working in remote regions of the world and members of Congress.
“We are talking about being able to brief U.S. officials who are policy makers on details on situations in countries where U.S. visibility is low and U.S. presence is scarce,” Noah Gottschalk, senior humanitarian policy adviser at Oxfam America, told The Chronicle last month.
In the revised executive order, issued Monday, Iraq has been eliminated from the travel-ban list. People already issued visas can still travel to the United States, and the order includes waivers for some cases, such as individuals in need of urgent medical care. The permanent barring of Syrian refugees was also scrapped.
International aid groups’ employees, traveling with visas issued before the order, should not be affected.
However, the 120-day freeze on refugee admissions is still in place in the new order — which the White House is phasing in over a two-week period — and that drew special concern among charities that work to resettle refugees in the United States.
Hans Van de Weerd, vice president for U.S. programs at the International Rescue Committee, said 60,000 refugees have already been approved for resettlement in the United States following a rigorous vetting process. But many of those approvals have a narrow time window, and he worries that some will expire before the 90 days is over.
“This is not an innocent pause but a serious setback to individual refugees but also to the refugee program as a whole,” Mr. Van de Weerd said.
Resettlement charities are working together to make sure that some level of service and support remain in place within any community in the United States where refugees are being resettled, he said.
“That requires a lot of collaboration, because not all of the agencies, because of their financial situation, will be able to continue their work, which is a negative impact of the ban,” Mr. Van de Weerd said.
Such groups are seeing an uptick in support from the public, he said.
“It is very heartwarming also to note the incredible support we are getting from the business community, from volunteers, from people that want to make additional financial contributions to maintain that welcoming nature of America.” Mr. Van de Weerd said.
A spokesperson for International Rescue Committee said the group saw a 198 percent increase in volunteer applications in January and February compared to the same period last year. The spokesperson said he could not comment on whether the group had seen a spike in donations in recent months.
