President Donald Trump and his political team managed to keep the travel ban secret — despite working on it for months, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Before Trump even won the election, aides were busy working on a plan to keep potential terrorists from entering the U.S.
They feared if word leaked out, terrorists would get into the U.S. before the plan was in place, according to the Journal. The secrecy also stopped critics from knowing exactly what the president was going to do.
Trump signed the executive order on Friday which indefinitely barred Syrian refugees from coming into the U.S. and restricted travel by those from seven Muslim-majority nations.
The Journal noted Trump was revising the order right up to the time he actually signed it. The final version left out a plan to establish 'safe zones' in Syria and surrounding areas to protect Syrian nationals, the newspaper reports.
And an earlier version included just a 30-day ban on those from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from coming into the U.S. The ban was extended to 90 days in the final version.
Administration officials were able to keep the planned order so quiet that many U.S. immigration officials didn't see it until after it was signed by Trump, according to the Journal. And Customs and Border Protection agents working at airports were left with unanswered questions when they started detaining people on Saturday.
The Journal also reported Democratic aides on Capitol Hill said key committee and party leadership only learned of the executive action from press reports.
Despite protests from those who oppose the order and confusion on how to implement it, one administration official called the order a "success," Politico reported.
"It really is a massive success story in terms of implementation on every single level," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the website.