By Claire Bernish

A federal judge issued an emergency stay against President Donald Trump’s tectonic Executive Order imposing a ban on immigration from several predominantly Muslim countries to, at least temporarily, allow people in possession of a valid visa who have already landed in the United States to remain in the country.

For now, people already in the U.S. will not be deported under sweeping terms dictated by Trump’s blanket restrictions.

As The Verge reports,

The court ruled on a habeas corpus petition filed by the ACLU on behalf of Hameed Khalid Darweesh and Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, who were denied entry to the US upon landing at JFK airport in New York City and detained indefinitely by Customs and Border Patrol. Darweesh spent a decade working for the United States military in Iraq as an interpreter and engineer and had been granted an entry visa after background checks; Alshawi had been granted a visa in order to join his wife and son who are already permanent residents of the US after their similar service with the US military.

Trump’s immigration and refugee ban has utterly shocked the world, sparking vociferous protests at airports around the country and garnering equivalent responses from countries on the president’s verboten list.

“We don’t want them here,” Trump said upon signing the order. “We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas. We only want to admit those into our country who will support our country and love deeply our people.”

At issue is the broad stroke of the executive order, as law enforcement, airport staff, and Transportation Safety Administration personnel scrambled to interpret the move on the fly.

Beyond the aforementioned two cases, anecdotal tales of families being separated and inexplicable deportation orders circulated around social media, as human and civil rights groups rushed to handle the fallout and assess the scope of the damage.

Now, thanks to the emergency stay issued by the federal judge for the Eastern District of New York,

“The court specifically ruled on Darweesh and Alshawi’s petition; other similarly-situated people being detained and those in transit are covered by the ruling, which is only temporary,” The Verge continued. “But the point of a stay is to preserve the status quo while a permanent ruling is made — something the judge specifically reminded the lawyers for the goverment in the courtroom. And as the tweet from the National Immigration Law Center’s Jackie Vimo indicates above, the judge feels there is a likelihood of success on the merits for the case moving forward.”

According to the ban, citizens from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and Libya are barred from entering the country for at least 90 days — and refugees from anywhere on the planet will not be allowed to enter the United States at all.

Critics immediately called the sweeping legislation a ‘Muslim ban’ on the order of similar proposals proffered by the new president while on the campaign trail. Trump, however, denied the executive order banned anyone adhering to the religion of Islam, again championing national security as the impetus for the pointedly contentious action.