The acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection acknowledged on Tuesday the at-times turbulent implementation of President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration.
Kevin McAleenan said in a press conference, alongside Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and others, that his agency “acted quickly on Friday evening” to comply with the executive order. He later said that he oversaw the issuance of waivers for hundreds of visa-holders “over a matter of hours Friday night into Saturday afternoon.”
McAleenan laid some of the blame for the long weekend of coordination between his agency’s leadership and agents in airports on the intervention of federal courts.
“In this case we had court orders come in right when we are implementing the operational plan, so we had to adjust our efforts a little bit,” he said. “But we worked quickly to implement and I think the process is really smoothed out. And just to clarify, the initial communications weren’t within 72 hours, they were within two hours of the executive order being received.”
In his introductory remarks, McAleenan’s described a packed series of events starting just hours after Trump issued his order on Friday.
“First, we made changes in our system to identify those passport holders and visa holders from the affected countries. We had a call with our field leadership, our director of field operations, to inform them of the executive order and the actions they needed to take. We issued written guidance to our field,” he said. “We had calls with stakeholders, these are air carriers and airports starting just a few hours after receiving the order so that they would understand how to operate. We also overnight on Friday and Saturday worked through a process to be able to waive travelers that were in transit or had sensitive cases that should be considered for a waiver or in national interest as the executive order calls for”
The acting commissioner also said more information would be available for those visa-holders and other parties affected by the order—information that might normally be available as soon as an order such as this was implemented.
“We are updating on our website and it will be there as you login at CBP.gov: A statement about the implementation; FAQ’s giving information to travelers, the public, and other stakeholders; as well as a link for specific questions affecting individual travelers and a phone number to call,” he said.
