A day after a federal appeals court rejected his executive order to ban travel from seven majority-Muslim countries, President Donald Trump said he will introduce “something new” to replace the controversial order.
Mr Trump suffered the embarrassing defeat after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ unanimous decision to pause the President’s executive order. In response to his second federal court loss in less than a week, Mr Trump furiously told the court he would “SEE YOU IN COURT,” via Twitter.
SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017
“Safety is one of the reasons I’m standing here today, the security of our country,” Mr Trump said at a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. “So, we’ll be doing something very rapidly having to do with additional security for our country. You’ll be seeing that sometime next week.”
He added: “We will continue to go through the court process, and ultimately I have no doubt that we’ll win that particular case.”
Earlier Friday, the White House confirmed to NBC that they were drafting a new executive order that would use language that the courts would eventually favour.
He initially announced the idea as a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”, described in a statement that is still on the Trump campaign website.
Trump reacts to travel ban ruling
“This is not about religion,” he said. “This is about terror and keeping our country safe. There are over 40 different countries worldwide that are majority-Muslim that are not affected by this order.”
Still, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani said that Mr Trump had come to him for advice about how to enact a “Muslim ban” seeking “the right way to do it legally”.
No immigrants or refugees from the seven countries have carried out an attack on US soil, none of the 9/11 hijackers originated from the countries listed in Mr Trump’s order.
The halt of the executive order earned major praise from civil liberties groups across the country.
“The appeals court’s refusal to reinstate the Muslim ban is correct,” ACLU Immigrant Rights Project director Omar Jadwat told The Indpendent. “The government’s erratic and chaotic attempts to enforce this unconstitutional ban have taken a tremendous toll on innocent individuals, our country’s values, and our standing in the world.
“We will keep fighting this un-American executive order until it is permanently dismantled.”