The order temporarily suspends the United States` main refugee program and halts visas being issued to citizens of several predominantly Muslim countries, including Iraq. "Mr. Trump, the new president, killed our dreams," said one Baghdad man whose wife worked for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as a bookkeeper. He helped two of the interpreters come to the United States as refugees with their families, putting them up initially in his home in Dallas, Texas. Iraqis coming to the United States under the Special Immigrant Visa program for Iraqis, which stopped accepting new applications in 2014, or the ongoing Direct Access Program for U.S.-Affiliated Iraqis are losing hope of ever getting out. Another 58,000 Iraqis were awaiting interviews under the Direct Access program, according to the International Refugee Assistance Project.

He also noted that none of the three former detainees who sued them was officially deemed an enemy combatant. In a first-of-its-kind ruling last April, U.S. Senior District Judge Justin Quackenbush had already greenlighted the civil lawsuit against the contractors, who are credited with developing the George W. Bush-era torture program detailed in a scathing Senate intelligence report made public in 2014. The Obama administration abandoned the use of torture in 2009, but it also successfully blocked efforts to hold accountable the CIA and government officials who rationalized its use and implemented it during the Bush years. ?There have been so many cases brought by torture victims ... and not one of them has been able to go forward, for shameful reasons,? the ACLU?s Hina Shamsi told reporters in April, the first time the case was allowed to proceed. ?This is a very big deal for our clients.?Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud and Gul Rahman were identified as victims in the executive summary of the Senate torture report, and their case against the CIA contractors relies largely on public information from the report.

Groups that support curbing immigration applauded the order, highlighting that it made good on the president?s campaign... President Donald Trump?s order to temporarily suspend the U.S. refugee program and nationals from several majority-Muslim countries, as well as to indefinitely ban the entry of Syrian refugees, drew fierce condemnation from civil-rights organizations and leaders of faith-based groups charged with absorbing refugees.