Donald Trump’s new ‘Muslim ban’ still does not include countries that have produced terrorists

Donald Trump’s new executive order, banning immigrants and refugees from six Muslim-majority countries, still excludes countries which sent terrorists came to the US.

The newly-worded travel ban does not include Saudi Arabia, Egypt or the United Arab Emirates - all countries with which Mr Trump did business and from where the 9/11 plane hijackers came.

At a press conference on Monday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the six countries were chosen for exclusion on the grounds that their governments were "unable or unwilling to provide the information we need" to vet incoming people "responsibly".

The original ban, signed late January and knocked down by a federal judge eight days later, was proposed to defend the US from terrorist attacks, despite no individual from those countries having killed a single American in a terrorist attack on US soil since 2001.

Nearly all travellers were banned under the first order for 90 days and Syrian refugees were suspended indefinitely.

No Syrian refugee had even been charged with the intent to carry out an attack on US soil in more than four decades, according to a report by the Cato Institute.

In the new ban, Syrian refugees will only be barred for 120 days, the same as all other refugees. Iraq has also been taken off the list, and green card holders will no longer be ensnared by the ban.

The President has ignored a report from the Department of Homeland Security which said barring people from certain countries would not reduce the terrorist threat.

Many recent attacks were carried out by US-born citizens, and the ban does not address white extremism like the case of Dylann Roof who killed nine African American churchgoers in 2015 in Charleston.

The President has stated the new executive order will start to be phased in on 16 March. The last ban was declared to start immediately because the President said he did not want "bad dudes" to have a window to still get into the US.

He has also asked for a report from various government agencies to determine the “long-term costs” of admitting and supporting refugees in the US and how he can seek to curtail those costs.

The new ban does nothing to increase vetting of travellers from the countries which produced the dozen terrorists who came to the US more than 17 years ago, trained to fly planes at a US institution and crashed into the Twin Towers in New York, killing more than 2,000 people.