The State Department says approximately 60,000 visas were provisionally revoked as a result of President Trump’s executive order on immigration, contradicting a larger figure previously cited by a Justice Department attorney.
In federal court Friday during a hearing on one of the lawsuits challenging Mr. Trump’s executive order, a Justice Department attorney said 100,000 visas had been cancelled.
Officials with the State Department were unable to provide an explanation on the discrepancy. A Justice Department spokeswoman could not be immediately reached to clarify the difference in the figures provided.
“Fewer than 60,000 individuals’ visas were provisionally revoked to comply with the executive order,” said Will Cocks, the State Department’s spokesman for the Bureau of Consular Affairs. “We recognize that those individuals are temporarily inconvenienced while we conduct our review under the executive order.”
The executive order indefinitely halts the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the U.S., blocks other refugees for 120 days, and temporarily bars nearly all citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from traveling to the U.S. Signed into law Friday, the order has already been met with fierce resistance with numerous lawsuits challenging its constitutionality.
The cancellation of the visas means individuals outside the United States will not be able to use them to travel to the U.S. For those already in the country, officials said the cancellation will not have any affect on their legal status.
The State Department was unable to provide an estimate of how many individual with revoked visas are currently in the United States.
The State Department issued approximately 11 million immigrant and non-immigrant visas overall in fiscal 2015.
• Andrea Noble can be reached at anoble@washingtontimes.com.
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