President Donald Trump's new executive order on immigration will have been gone over "with a fine-toothed comb" and with national security experts, and as Department of Homeland Security John Kelly now has control of it, it will be "done and done right" this time around, political strategist Karl Rove said Monday.
"Kelly has grabbed control and said 'I'm not leaving this thing in the hands of a White House staffer," said Rove, a deputy chief of staff in former President George W. Bush's administration, told Fox News' "Happening Now."
The revised ban will continue to target the same seven Muslim-majority nations of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, and Libya, a senior White House official told Fox News, but green-card holders and people who hold dual citizenships involving the United States and any of the seven named countries will be exempt.
It will also not involve travelers who already have a visa to travel to the United States, even if they have not yet used the document.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the order before it is made public, said green-card holders and dual citizens of the U.S. and any of those countries are exempt. The new draft also no longer directs authorities to single out — and reject — Syrian refugees when processing new visa applications.
The new ban also does not halt the flow of refugees from Syria, Rove said.
"What it does is drop the total number of refugees from the 110,000 contemplated by President [Barack] Obama to 50,000," Rove said.
"We have already accepted 35,000 in the fiscal year. From now till the end of September that government can only allow allow 15,000 refugees. This was very smart because it does slow up the refugee flow. It probably means a higher standard for those who are led in here."
But the new order will not tell an already-vetted family from Syria it cannot come to the United States, Rove said, but "it simply says that you have to compete with everybody in the line."
Rove said he does not believe the first rollout was troubled because Democrats have been slowly approving Trump's cabinet and staff, as Kelly was approved Jan. 20; however, he was not fully involved in the rollout, or include him and other officials while announcing the ban.
"They did not have an executive order copy to hand to the press for over two hours" after it was announced, Rove said, and questions were not answered until close to 9 p.m. that Friday night.
"Secretary Kelly knows what a problem that was," Rove said. "He admitted it before Congress. He took the blame on himself, but the blame is not his. The blame is on the White House staffers who wrote this thing out without fully involving the agency."
But there was a rush by the Trump White House to rollout the first version of the document, Rove said, and there were "obviously mistakes in it."