WASHINGTON _ There was swift backlash from fellow Republicans, world leaders and thousands of angry Americans. But President Donald Trump again refused to back down.
Trump insisted that his order barring citizens of seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States was the correct policy even as confusion reined at airports where immigrants, some green-card holders, were detained or barred from entering the United States.
"America is a proud nation of immigrants and we will continue to show compassion to those fleeing oppression, but we will do so while protecting our own citizens and border," Trump said in a statement Sunday. "America has always been the land of the free and home of the brave. We will keep it free and keep it safe, as the media knows, but refuses to say."
The White House always faces pressure to act when presidents start their first term. But with Trump, the pressure was magnified because he won a stunning victory by convincing millions of Americans that he would act _ and act fast _ with a mandate from that part of the nation yearning for change.
Trump reiterated his support for the measure he signed Friday in a series of Twitter posts and his late-afternoon statement, and his advisers said that while they accept the judicial orders allowing green-card holders to enter the nation, they will continue to study whether to expand the number of nations from which citizens could not enter the United States.
"My guess is they're not going to back off one inch," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has long advised Trump. "I think we will learn over the course of his presidency that Trump communicates by action, not by speeches. He tells us he's going to do something and then he does it."
Scott Jennings, who worked in the George W. Bush White House, said Trump and his aides are dismissing the "hysteria" about the order in urban areas across the country as simply more criticism from the people who didn't vote for him anyway.
"I think everything they have done this week has been a direct response to what brought them to the White House," he said. "This is a core issue that he ran on."
Sunday, Trump reiterated that the U.S. will be issuing visas to all countries again once "we are sure we have reviewed and implemented the most secure policies over the next 90 days."
After campaigning on the issue, Trump signed an order late Friday freezing refugee admissions and temporarily blocking people from seven nations from entering the United States even with valid visas: Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Syria.
In office only a week when he signed the order, Trump still has not filled many top staff positions and the ones he has filled are occupied by political aides with little or no government experience.
That may account for confusion surrounding the immigration order, which was crafted in the White House based on ideas submitted in June by Rep. Mike McCaul, the Texas Republican who heads the House Committee on Homeland Security, and Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, McCaul said on CNN Saturday.
Trump aides at the White House wrote the highly technical order, but it was not reviewed by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and reports published Sunday said it was shared only with Department of Homeland Security officials after the order was signed.
That process was consistent with how Trump operated his businesses, said Barbara Res, a former Trump Organization executive who spent 18 years working for Trump.
"He gets an idea and he says 'just do it,' " Res said. "It's very difficult to say no to him ... . He has broad ideas _ sometime good ideas _ and people just do what he says."
There were signs, however, that Trump might scale back the order in the face of opposition. Trump's chief of staff, Reince Priebus, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that green-card holders would not be affected by the order "going forward" and Trump himself promised in an afternoon statement that the U.S. would resume issuing visas to "all countries" after the 90-day temporary ban ends.
But the White House offered no signed document formalizing those changes, and people familiar with Trump's style said they wouldn't be surprised if he ignored criticism from the likes of Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, two longtime Trump detractors, that the order would make it easier for terrorist groups to recruit.
"His comfort zone is being combative, belligerent and aggressive," said author Gwenda Blair, whose book "Trumps: Three Generations that Built an Empire" was recently republished. "Much of planet is an uproar ... that's a fantastic home run."
