WASHINGTON (AP) - The State Department says fewer than 60,000 foreigners from seven majority-Muslim countries had their visas provisionally canceled after President Donald Trump's executive order blocked them from traveling to the U.S.

 

 That figure contradicts a Justice Department lawyer's claim Friday during a hearing in Virginia about the ban. That number is considerably lower than the number given by a Justice Department attorney, who said today in federal court in Virginia that 100,000 visas were revoked as a result of the order, as Carmel Delshad of member station WAMU reported. The department clarified that the higher figure used by the Justice Department lawyer included diplomatic and other visas that were exempted by the travel ban, as well as expired visas. It alleges that the Aziz brothers and as many as 60 other foreign nationals were detained by Customs and Border Protection agents upon arriving at Washington Dulles International Airport last weekend and "forced to sign" I-407 forms "against their will and without their knowledge or consent." "U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said that it was clear to her the temporary travel ban on seven majority-Muslim countries went into effect too quickly, and not a lot of thought went into it," and issued a seven-day extension of a temporary order barring the deportation of green card holders from Dulles Airport, Delshad reported. The executive order bans people from traveling to the U.S. from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for three months, suspends new-refugee admissions for 120 days and bars Syrian refugees indefinitely. A government attorney cited the figure at a federal court hearing over a new lawsuit filed by the state of Virginia to join an existing lawsuit, Aziz v. Trump, against the Trump administration's immigration order.
A lawyer for the Justice Department, in a federal court in Virginia, says 100,000 visas have been revoked this week. A State Department spokesperson says the actual number is fewer than 60,000.