Green card holders outside US 'barred from re-entering'

Trump's controversial temporary ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries on security grounds applies to holders of US 'green card' residence cards, US officials said on Saturday.

US permanent residents from the countries included in the measure travelling into US ports of entry will be barred, said a spokeswoman for the department of homeland security, which is in charge of immigration issues, on Saturday. 

"It will bar green card holders," Gillian Christensen, acting department of homeland security spokeswoman, said in an email to Reuters.

It is not clear what will happen to green-card holders from the seven countries already in the US and whether they have to leave.

Neither is it known if residents who are already on flights set to land in US airports today will be allowed into the country, or those outside and wanting to rejoin their families in America.

Earlier, airlines that said they would enforce the ban such as EgyptAir and Qatar Airways suggested they would let green-card holders from the affected nations board flights to the US.

Reports are surfacing of arrivals from Muslim countries being detained at US airports.

US authorities wasted no time implementing Donald Trump's order halting Muslim arrivals, detaining travelers arriving at American airports within hours of the US president signing the tough new measures, media reports said Saturday.

The New York Times reported that airport officials as early as Friday night began detaining travelers, some of whom already had been aboard their flights when Trump announced his executive order closing America's borders to refugees.

Trump's order suspends entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days and indefinitely halts the admission of refugees from Syria.

It also bans entry into the US from travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries - Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen - for 90 days.


Agencies contributed to this report.