US civil rights groups are warning that an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Monday lays the groundwork for the reinstatement of a ban on travellers from predominantly Muslim or Arab countries, Reuters reports.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) said the new order relied on the same statutory authority used to justify Trump’s 2017 travel ban and offered even “wider latitude to use ideological exclusion to deny visa requests and remove individuals” who had already entered the country.

The new order goes beyond Trump’s 2017 ban on travellers from seven predominantly Muslim countries, adding language that deny people visas or entry to the US if they “bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles,” and sets up a process that could lead to removal of those granted visas since January 2021.

The White House did not reply to repeated queries about the order.

During the presidential campaign, Trump said he would re-impose travel bans on people from the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and “anywhere else that threatens our security.”

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