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Trump's travel ban scheduled to end on Sunday

By Ed Adamczyk
Attorneys camp out at Los Angeles International Airport to assist travelers from Muslim countries on June 29. An executive order by president Donald Trump, limiting travel to the United States from six predominantly Muslim countries, expires Sunday. File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI
Attorneys camp out at Los Angeles International Airport to assist travelers from Muslim countries on June 29. An executive order by president Donald Trump, limiting travel to the United States from six predominantly Muslim countries, expires Sunday. File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 22 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump's ban on travel to the United States by citizens of six Muslim countries expires Sunday, and he may announce the next step in his executive order Friday.

In his Twitter response to last week's terrorist attack on a London subway, Trump hinted he might broaden the initial ban. Renewal of the ban on entry into the United States by most citizens of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Sudan or Somalia could restart controversy over the action.

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Two sources in the Trump administration told Bloomberg a follow-up on the ban could come as soon as Friday.

When it was announced in January, the original action provoked sharp criticism from corporate leaders, led to multiple court challenges and reports of internal strife within the White House.

The injunction against visitors was needed, Trump officials said, to conduct a review of U.S. immigration vetting procedures. Results of that review were recently submitted to the White House by the Department of Homeland Security.

Although not publicly revealed, the review could recommend a strengthening of vetting protocols for visas and refugees, the addition new nations to the list or an entirely new order, The Hill reported Friday. A statement from White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said no decisions have been made.

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Trump's executive order was issued one week after his inauguration. It barred those from the identified nations from entering the U.S. for 90 days, stopped the U.S. refugee resettlement program for 120 days and ended resettlement of refugees from the Syrian civil war.

Protests took place across the country, largely in airports, and subsequent legal challenges halted the program. The ban was then revoked and rewritten, eliminating Iraq from the list. Other changes were made to allow the order to survive court scrutiny.

The revised order was also delayed by the courts, but the U.S. Supreme Court overruled them in June. It permitted the government to begin enforcing the 90-day ban for travelers lacking a "bona fide" connection to a person or entity in the United States. That ban ends on Sunday.

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