DONALD VS COMPETENCE:

LESS THAN ONE week after senior leadership at the Department of Homeland Security issued a policy guidance that threatened to bring much of the government's asylum and refugee work to a grinding halt, a new directive issued to employees appears to reverse key elements of the procedures U.S. immigration officials are expected to follow. The contradictory directives came as government agencies struggled to interpret and implement the Trump administration's travel ban targeting seven Muslim-majority countries -- a broad and ambiguous order that is already facing legal challenges in several federal courts across the country.

According to an internal memo issued Thursday by Lori Scialabba, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the portion of Trump's controversial ban pertaining to the issuance of visas and other benefits to immigrants from the targeted countries "does not affect USCIS adjudication of applications and petitions filed for or on behalf of individuals in the United States regardless of their country or nationality."

The new memo, obtained by The Intercept, stands in direct contradiction to the earlier DHS guidance, which effectively blocked U.S. immigration officials from issuing decisions in any adjustment of status cases for nationals of the banned countries -- including applications for permanent residency and naturalization by individuals already in the United States.

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