President Trump’s ‘travel ban’ will take effect tonight

Immigrants and refugees from six majority-Muslim countries will be barred from entering the United States beginning Thursday night unless they can prove a relationship with a U.S. person or entity.

The limitations will take effect at 8 pm ET, three days after the Supreme Court ruled to allow President Donald Trump to implement a modified version of his controversial executive order — a travel ban, as he’s previously called it — that’s been challenged in courtrooms around the country.

The order targets six countries: Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Migrants and refugees from those countries who are legal residents of the United States, already have obtained a visa or have a job offer from a U.S. company will be allowed to enter the United States, senior administration officials said Thursday. So too can individuals who have close family here, including parents, children and spouses.

But the government’s interpretation of close family doesn’t include grandparents, grandchildren, aunts and uncles, officials said. And refugees who have worked with resettlement agencies also don’t qualify to come to the United States under the Trump administration’s interpretation of the Supreme Court’s ruling.

To that end, they would be subject to the order’s restrictions, which bars arrivals from the six targeted countries from entering the United States for 90 days — while refugees are blocked from arriving in the country for the next 120 days.

Trump’s executive order matters greatly to tech companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft, which have intervened in multiple court battles to stress that the directive would harm their companies as well as their workers, some of whom are immigrants. The tech industry had been one of the earliest, most vocal critics of Trump’s approach, even holding protests against the president’s first attempt at a travel ban, which also had been halted by federal judges.

Even though Trump’s order will take effect, the legal battle is not over: The Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of the travel ban during arguments scheduled for October.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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