Over 100,000 visas revoked due to Muslim ban

Over 100,000 visas to the US have been revoked since President Donald Trump’s ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, a government lawyer said in court on Friday.

The revelation was made in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia during a hearing in a lawsuit filed by attorneys for two Yemeni brothers.

The brothers claim they were coerced into giving up their legal resident visas last Saturday and deported to Ethiopia.

Erez Reuveni, a lawyer from the Justice Department’s Office of Immigration Litigation told the court that Trump’s executive order resulted in over 100,000 visas being revoked, to an “audible gasp” in the courtroom according to Betsy Woodruff, a reporter present in the room.

The number of people affected by the ban stands in stark contrast to claims made earlier this week by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who said only 109 people were affected by the order.

"Three hundred and twenty-five thousand people flew into this country from airports and 109 people were affected and slowed down in their travel. I understand that is an inconvenience but at the end of the day that is a small price to pay as opposed to somebody losing their life because a terrorist attack was admitted," Spicer told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” programme on Monday.

The claim was also made by Trump in a tweet, in which he blamed the chaos and confusion in US airports on a computer outage suffered by Delta Airlines several days prior to his executive order.

Hours after the revelations on Friday, the State Department said fewer than 60,000 foreigners from the countries subject to the ban had their visas canceled.

The State Department said the higher figure includes diplomatic and other visas that were actually exempted by the travel ban, as well as expired visas.

Donald Trump signed an executive order last Friday that temporarily closed US borders to refugees as well as to visa holders from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.