US civil rights groups are warning that an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Monday lays the groundwork for reinstatement of a ban on travelers from predominantly Muslim or Arab countries.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) said the new order relied on the same statutory authority used to justify Trump’s 2017 travel ban and offered even “wider latitude to use ideological exclusion to deny visa requests and remove individuals” who had already entered the country.

It unveiled a new 24-hour hotline (844-232-9955) to help those affected.

The National Iranian-Americans Council (NIAC) said Trump’s order on “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and other National Security and Public Safety Threats” would separate US families from loved ones and lower enrollment at US universities. 

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Trump’s new order, signed on Monday amid a flurry of other measures, sets a 60-day window for top State, Justice, intelligence and homeland security officials to identify countries whose vetting and screening processes are “so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension on the admission of nationals from those countries.”

It goes beyond Trump’s 2017 ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries, adding language that denies people visas or entry to the US if they “bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles,” and sets up a process that could lead to the removal of those granted visas since January 2021. (Reuters)

The White House did not reply to repeated queries about the order.

Josef Burton, a former State Department official and visa officer, told a conference organized by NIAC that the new order could give the government “a lot of undefined authority” to deny a range of visas for students, workers and education exchange participants. (Reuters)