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Stay Placed on Part of Trump Travel Ban. Aired 2-2:30a ET

Aired January 29, 2017 - 02:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


GEORGE HOWELL: Welcome to our viewers around the world, I'm George Howell at the CNN Center in Atlanta following the breaking news this hour. A Federal Judge is temporarily stopping part of Donald Trump's travel ban. She granted an Emergency Stay for the citizens of 7 Muslim majority countries who have already arrived in the US and have valid Visas. That stay also covers those who were in transit. That means they will not be deported immediately.

This ruling came after a day of protests at airports across the United States. US Homeland Security official says that prior to the Judge's Emergency Stay the US denied entry to at least 109 people who were in transit. Nearly 200 others they were told not to board their flights, headed for the US, all of this in less than a day since the US President, Donald Trump signed this new travel ban. The American Civil Liberties Union, better known as the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the ban. They released this statement saying quote, "This ruling preserves the status quo and ensures that people who have granted permission to be in this country are not illegally removed off US soil."

We're also getting some clarification as to what will exactly happen to those who are now covered by this Emergency Stay. One of the drafters of the Motion to Halt, uh Donald Trump's travel ban is telling CNN quote, "the Judge's Order is that those with a lawful Visa or Greencard not be removed from the US." It doesn't immediately Order that they will be released from detention. The Department of Homeland Security has looked over the recent rulings and it says, "That it will comply with judicial orders faithfully and enforce our immigration laws and implement the President's Executive Orders to ensure that those entering the United States do not pose a threat to our country or to the American people."

Again, here's a general overview of President Donald Trump's travel ban. It bars people from 7 predominately Muslim nations from entering the US for 90 days. I wana show you this map now of the countries that are affected. Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Lybia, Yemen and Somalia. The order also suspends the US refugee admissions program for 120 days. That is until the so called extreme vetting procedures are put in place. Syrian refugees, they are barred indefinitely. Also, people holding certain Visas will now have to undergo in person interviews in order to renew them. This travel ban has left a great many people in limbo. CNN spoke with a Yazidi woman who was ready to board her flight from Iraq to the United States only to find out that she would not be allowed on that plane. Arwa Damon has her story for us. ARWA DAMON: Delal (ph?) and her husband Yazidis (ph?) were in Sinjar when ISIS' stormed through the area on a killing and kidnapping rampage. They barely escaped. For them, that was the end of any notion that they could go a future in Iraq. Delal is not her real name but she is afraid that by speaking out she might ruin whatever chance remains to reach the United States. Despite it being the land of free speech.

DELAL (ph?): (Translated) My dream was to go to America because it's the strongest country in the world. We feel that its safe. It's the safest country and it has the strongest human rights.

UNIDENTIFIED And this is the protection of the nation from the foreign terrorists entrance.

ARWA DAMON: But with one signature that vision of America shattered. Delal (ph?) says that her husband worked as a translator for the US Military for years and applied for asylum under the special immigrant visa program. It was granted and he arrived in America last summer. On Saturday Delal (ph?) was on her way to finally reunite with him.

DELAL (ph?): (Translated) I was about to get on the plane and they called my name. I went and they said, you can't board, you can't travel. I was shocked. I cried, why, why me?

ARWA DAMON: Delal (ph?) was given this document from Homeland Security at the airport that basically tells her how she can put in an inquiry and figure out why she was denied boarding although that's pretty clear at this stage. What isn't clear is when she can apply again and what she's supposed to do now. So she and all the others are basically right now in a state of limbo. She is hardly on her own the temporary travel ban on 7 Muslim majority nations to the US and the indefinite ban on Syrian refugees has left countless people reeling wondering how it is that the new leader of the so called free world can have so little compassion for their suffering.

DELAL (ph?): (Translated) My brain isn't working. I am in shock. If I think of something I start to cry. I am not crying because I am weak but because I had small dreams and I thought if I went to America they would benefit from my small dreams and I could make them come true there and I could be safe.

ARWA DAMON: What's your message right now to President Trump?

DELAL (ph?): (Translated) My message is that we don't hate President Trump. We don't hate anyone, we love the American people. Have mercy. We don't have mercy in our country.

ARWA DAMON: But mercy, even for those who have suffered the most does not seem to be on Trump's America first agenda. Arwa Damon, CNN, Erbil, Iraq.

GEORGE HOWELL: This travel ban having wide ranging ramifications. We get some insight now on the ban from Theresa Cardinal Brown (ph?), the Director for Immigration Policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington based thinktank and she has more again on the ramifications on President, Donald Trump's order and the stay that came after it.

THERESA CARDINAL: The immigration law does give the President very broad authority to deny entry to immigrates or classes of immigrants, uh, based on any criteria that the President deems is a national interest. Um, but there are other parts of the law on including, uh, including laws of the United States as signatory to about protection of the refugees and not sending people back to places where they can be subject to torture or persecution um and so basically that's what the courts are gona look at. They're gona look at what are the laws that apply here and which is the law that is superseding the other, um, so that's why I think this is gonna play out, like I said this is the first case I can see other cases coming not just for refugees but for example the Greencard holders and for others, um, and some of this is the Executive Orders were rolled out very, very quickly, uh, they were rolled out without implementation plans in place at the agencies so decisions are being made on the ground on the fly by people who haven't had guidance from above and that's implicating how things are being carried out.

GEORGE HOWELL: Universities across the United States are trying to cope with this new travel ban. We now know that Yale, Princeton, Stanford and MIT have all issued advisory emails to their students and faculty about how they are to deal with this new Executive Order. The University of Michigan went a step further refusing to disclose student's immigration information. The statement reads as follows: In accordance with Federal Law, the enforcement of immigration law rests with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. Campus police will not partner with Federal, State, or Local law enforcement agencies to enforce Federal Immigration Law except when required to do so by law." There is a great deal of reaction to the President's travel ban. There have been protests from the State of California to New York at airports where people have been stranded by this ban. Hundreds of people demonstrated outside of JFK airport in New York. The airport briefly restricted travel on trains there to employees and to ticketed passengers but the State's Governor reversed that decision saying the people of New York will have their voices heard. More demonstrations are expected on Sunday. Also getting reaction from Hilary Clinton tweeting this, "I stand with the people gathered across the country tonight defending our values and our constitution. This is not who we are." Earlier Saturday the US President responded to the controversy before that Stay was granted. He stood behind his Executive Order saying that it is already successful, listen, "It is not a Muslim ban but we're very prepared, it's working out very nicely, you see it at the airports, you see it all over, its working out very nicely and we're going to have a very, very strict ban and we're going to have extreme vetting which we should have had in this country for many years."

Donald Trump there, the President of the United States also now hearing from Iran responding to President Trump's ban, our Senior International Correspondent, Nick Paton Walsh has more on that and the reaction from across the Middle East.

NICK PATON WALSH: The most vociferous anger of reactions so far from Iran which has not only moved it seemed to the stage to reciprocate a ban on citizens getting Visas to Iran but also issued a harshly worded statement calling this "an insult", a "gift to extremists" and also echoing some of the phrasing we're seeing across this region here this is a move "to restrict travel for Muslims." Now of course those 7 countries banned are predominately Muslim, not all predominately Muslim countries a part of that ban but I think in this region too are questioning the logic here, Donald Trump does cite 9/11, uh, the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001 as being part of the rationale for this Executive Order while the predominates of most the hijackers were in fact from Saudi Arabia, that's not impacted by this ban at all. We've also seen chaos sewn across the regions airports in Cairo for example, US bound passengers turned back in Amman it appeared at this point according to one senior airport official no instructions issued for any change of behavior at all but people I think questioning their desire to travel to the US at this point whether its worth the risk frankly of arriving and finding that you're caught up, maybe your Greencard won't let you in, maybe you're put on, uh, some watch list moving forward, a lot of uncertainty and this will, I think, impact upon people who already have fears that Donald Trump may be radically revising, uh, the US's relationship with the Muslim world and this is part of the world too. This, a very swift, very blanket move, what some may see as a bit to find a very simple solution to a very complex problem, one that may potentially block out of the United States many members of nations that could be extraordinarily helpful in terms of intelligence value towards the US or just bringing their skills to the country to and will of course increase the gulf between those nation states and the US particularly in countries like Iraq whether they're dependent upon Iraqis to lead the fight on the ground against ISIS and in Syria too there's been an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees Syrians many of them fighting against the regime angry at the absence of the help they received from the United States and now frankly they'll see that even their most badly in need won't be given some kind of shelter in the United States now so a lot of harsh reaction I think we'll see moving forward, maybe more reciprocations of the Visa ban from other nations and I think a lot of fear stokes in this already volatile region. Nick Paton Walsh, CNN Beruit.

GEORGE HOWELL: And we thank you for being with us for this breaking news coverage. I'm George Howell at the CNN center in Atlanta. Marketplace Africa is next and I'll have your world headlines at the bottom of the hour. This is CNN, the world's news leader.

ELENI GIOKOS: Welcome to Marketplace Africa, where we cover the biggest economic trends impacting the continents, I'm Eleni Giokos, in for Zain Asher here in Johannesburg. South Africa is a highly connected country, around 80% of social media users are accessing sites on their mobile devices and that's according to media consultant group, Block Box Theory. And this country is pretty active on average individual South Africans are creating one Instagram post and 6 Facebook posts every single day. And every two seconds in South Africa someone joins Linkedin and once online South Africans aren't only liking and sharing but they also creating movement.

UNIDENTIFIED: When South African students hit the street, demanding a drop in University

SPEAKER: fees they also hit the web. Fees must fall become one of the most tweeted hashtags in South Africa in 2016.

UNIDENTIFIED: This movement actually started on social media. If you look at from that

SPEAKER: perspective it is driven by social media. Because of that the real time movement of social media things were able to move a lot quicker and things were able to get done a lot quicker. So you could organize a rally, you could organize a march within a couple of minutes.

UNIDENTIFIED: There are 7.4 million Twitter users in South Africa and its not even the country's

SPEAKER: biggest social platform. That title goes to Facebook with 14 million active users. That's about a quarter of the population and according to world wide work, 85% are consumers on their mobile devices.

UNIDENTIFIED: Facebook has caught up to Twitter as a prime resource of breaking news. There

SPEAKER: are 25% of Facebooks users in South Africa are using it to consume news so wherever they work they were tuning in to Facebook, definitely tuning in as it was the new news channel.

UNIDENTIFIED: And many are trying to capture the interest of the South African Facebook User

SPEAKER: including one of America's most popular news site, the Huffington Post launched in South Africa in November in 2016.

UNIDENTIFIED: This will be our 17th market that we've expanded to around the world. We

SPEAKER: already reach 200 million people on a global basis and our footprint on social media is even bigger reaching as many as a billion video viewers each month.

UNIDENTIFIED: : Globally the Huffington Post relies heavily on Facebook which opened offices in

SPEAKER: South Africa in 2015.

UNIDENTIFIED: We've gone from traditional sources whether its newspapers and magazines

SPEAKER: and tv to online. Within online we've gone from desktop to mobile and within that we've gone from going to sources like The Huffington Post and CNN to social media platforms being a primary source of information and within that there's something really great which is access to a lot of different content.

UNIDENTIFIED: : And its that variety of content that has created a highly competitive market in

SPEAKER: South Africa. UNIDENTIFIED: It's a very important factor for us and very important to also work with

SPEAKER: Facebook, they often change the algorithm so its going to be up to date on what they're doing and how you can potentially reach your users and of course to also, um, give us a boost, um, leads to your own fact.

UNIDENTIFIED: The number one activity on Facebook for example in South Africa is

SPEAKER: entertainment. In terms of Twitter our biggest activity is media and news consumption. The turning point for us with Twitter in terms of the followership growing was after Pistorius' Trial. We leaped by 142%.

UNIDENTIFIED: For the Huffington Post, its not just about the right stories but also publishing in

SPEAKER: local languages.

UNIDENTIFIED: We are the first people to be doing that in Tsonga (ph?) content dominate.

SPEAKER: We need to really care for the African languages. But Africa is a market, it has a been compared to news market, um, we take exclusive and breaking stories and investigations really, really seriously in South Africa.

UNIDENTIFIED: The rise of the hashtag may have dominated news in South Africa in 2016 but

SPEAKER: there will be other things to look out for this year.

UNIDENTIFIED: It is probably going to be around three major trends. The one is how strong the

SPEAKER: story is that is broken, the other is how good the story is in other words the quality of the content and the third big trend is the fight against fake news sites to hijack the authentic news.

UNIDENTIFIED: But as news rooms come together to create clickable content the South African

SPEAKER: consumer will also be chasing the headlines as competition for their attention in pieces.

ELENI GIOKOS: When we return I'll speak to the founder of the Huffington Post and the new venture she's taking on.

KATE RILEY: I'm Kate Riley with your CNN Sport Headlines. A truly unique piece of tennis history for American, Serena Williams. The 35 year old was too good for her older sister Venus in Saturday's Australian Open Women's Final. Serena so dominate at this year's Australian Open, she didn't even drop one set throughout the whole thing. The straight sets victory meaning not just a 7th victory in Melbourne but more significantly its an open era record, 23rd Grand Slam Title surpassing legendary German, Steffi Graph, she is still one behind the all time leader though, Margaret Court. To the FA Cup in England where championship side Wolverhampton, down Liverpool, 2-1, out where 4-2 Wycombe Wanders looked as though they were gona pull out another upset on Saturday when they visited Tottenham Spurs already had to go in overtime of two goal deficit and found themselves trailing again after Gary Thompson (ph?) put the chairboys ahead late into the match but in the closing minutes, Dele Ali pulled out the level before Son Heung-Min pulled a stoppage time winner, Tott win 4-3 and the **** Burkina Faso*** has booked their spot in the ***Africa Cup Of Nations semi final after beating **** Tunisia on Saturday. We had to wait late on into the game before Burkina Faso were able to breakthrough, 2-nil it ends the last time Burkino Faso reached this stage was 2013. They would eventually lose in the final though and that's a look at your sports headlines. I'm Kate Riley.

ELENI GIOKOS: Welcome back, Ariana Huffington cofounded the Huffington Post in 2005. In 2011 she sold the company for 300 million dollars to AOL and then became President of the newly formed Huffington Media Group. And then in August of last year she stepped down to start up her new venture, a digital platform dedicated to health and wellness called Thrive Global. She told me about it on her weekend trip to South Africa.

Ariana, thank you very much for joining us ...

ARIANA HUFFINGTON: Thank you so much ...

ELENI GIOKOS: ... on CNN...

ARIANA HUFFINGTON: Great to be with a fellow Greek

ELENI GIOKOS: Fantastic to have you on. You're again starting up with a new company called Thrive which is fantastic when you look at the underlying reasons why you started this. You saw a problem, you see the stress has been, uh, taking over a lot of people, it overtook your life as well and now you're looking to capitalize on finding solutions. Tell me about how you plan to achieve that.

ARIANA HUFFINGTON: So, as you said, you know stress and burn out has become truly global pandemics affecting everything, affecting healthcare and healthcare costs, affecting leadership and decision making, affecting happiness and mental health and yet there is a better way that is so obvious and that is scientifically proven because of so much new scientific research that shows conclusively that when we take care of ourselves we are actually more effective more productive, better at everything we are doing so my new company Thrive Global is based on this new scientific evidence and providing solutions both to corporations working with the well being of their employees and seeing the impact on the bottom line. Producing content for a media platform which is only on this one topic of well being and productivity because there's an enormous amount of new technology, new wearable devices and new apps that track your diabetes, your high blood pressure and people are confused. They don't know what to trust. ELENI GIOKOS: Do you think its going to be, uh, taken up by corporates

that advocate we should be working a specific amount of hours everyday? That our productivity needs to get a certain level despite the fact that we are exhausted. Do you think that its going to be ....

ARIANA HUFFINGTON: Well ... its ... its ...

ELENI GIOKOS: ... taking you seriously but I'm curious to see if the corporates will be as well ...

ARIANA HUFFINGTON: It's already really being integrated in many corporation where big partnerships with Accenture, with JP Morgan, with Uber, with SAP so I think absolutely, I think there's a whole new understanding among many corporations that when they prioritize the well being of their employees, when they make it clear that no human being can be on all the time tethered to our devices and perform the next day but a lot of companies are actually making it clear that employees need to have real time to recharge uninterrupted by the demands of work.

ELENI GIOKOS: It sounds almost impossible, I mean we all are just married to our devices making sure that we check in to see if our bosses have sent us an email or not. What kind, I mean what do you think the next step is going to be globally, do you think we are going to see a new wave of taking wellbeing a lot more seriously.

ARIANA HUFFINGTON: Absolutely because we see the dramatically destructive results of being always on as producing on an employees health and healthcare costs on engagement and productivity because the truth is when you don't have enough time to recharge, your immune system is suppressed, you are more likely to catch colds, the flu are much worse and um you're not as engaged and productive at work in fact, we have the Gallup Poll results that only 13% of the labor force globally is engaged at work. Those numbers have to change.

ELENI GIOKOS: It's crazy. 13 percent of employees engaged at work ...

ARIANA HUFFINGTON: Yeah ...

ELENI GIOKOS: I mean that is just ....

ARIANA HUFFINGTON: So being at work ... being at work and not be engaged ... means nothing, you know its not about the number of hours you spend at your desk, its about how productive and present and engaged you are when you are there.

ELENI GIOKOS: You know all about needing to be engaged when you're a journalist you have to be just on all the time. On that note, this is a start up. We like calling it a start up ...

ARIANA HUFFINGTON: Yes

ELENI GIOKOS: Post funding valuation is at 73 million dollars, that's a huge amount, I mean how big do you think this company is going to get for you do you hope to build a huge empire? ARIANA HUFFINGTON: Well the company's called Thrive Global for a reason because we are basically launching from the beginning and across multiple countries. We believe that this pandemic of burn out is a global problem, the solutions are global and they, in every country we go to we want to tap into the wisdom and best traditions of that country and so you know you go to China and China has such deep, wisdom around the whole concept of Yin Yang which if you think of it, sums up everything we've been discussing. Yang is you go out into the world , you achieve, you conquer, Yin is you come back and refuel. We need to re create that refueling cycle.

ELENI GIOKOS: Well that does it for us here on Marketplace Africa. Be sure to check out our stories on our website as well as our Facebook page. I'm Eleni Giokos here in Johannesburg. I'll see you next time in the Marketplace.