Day 10: Chaos and Confusion Grows Over Trump’s Executive Order on Immigration

It’s been a tumultuous weekend in Donald Trump’s America. On Friday, the president issued an executive order that indefinitely suspended the resettlement of Syrian refugees and temporarily barred people from seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States.

The order unleashed chaos on the immigration system and received widespread condemnation from Democratic officials, humanitarian groups and a small number of Republican lawmakers.

Here’s a summary of the weekend’s events:

• Trump signed the executive order, titled “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States,” at 4:42 p.m. on Friday. The full text of the order can be found here.
• Immediately after Trump issued the order, students, visitors and green card holders were held up at airports in the U.S. and abroad.
• As news of the order spread, protests erupted at major airports across the country, and continued throughout the weekend.
• On Saturday night, the American Civil Liberties Union won a national stay on parts of the order. A federal judge in Brooklyn said that travelers held at U.S. airports should not be sent back to their home countries. Federal judges in three other states — Massachusetts, Virginia and Washington — issued similar rulings.
• On Sunday morning, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said on NBC that the order does not apply to green card holders. He added that anyone traveling from the seven countries would be subject to increased screening.
• On Monday night, Acting Attorney General Sally Q. Yates, an appointee of the Obama administration, ordered the Justice Department not to defend the order in court. In a letter to top lawyers in the department, Yates wrote that she did not think the order was lawful.
• In yet another dramatic turn of events, Trump fired Yates just hours after her statement, appointing U.S. attorney Dana Boente to replace her.