WASHINGTON \u2014 President Trump\u2019s executive order on immigration quickly reverberated through the United States and across the globe on Saturday, slamming the border shut for an Iranian scientist headed to a lab in Boston, an Iraqi who had worked as an interpreter for the United States Army, and a Syrian refugee family headed to a new life in Ohio, among countless others.
Around the nation, security officers at major international gateways had new rules to follow. Humanitarian organizations scrambled to cancel long-planned programs, delivering the bad news to families who were about to travel. Refugees who were airborne on flights when the order was signed were detained at airports.
At least one case quickly prompted a legal challenge as lawyers representing two Iraqi refugees held at Kennedy International Airport in New York filed a motion early Saturday seeking to have their clients released. They also filed a motion for class certification, in an effort to represent all refugees and other immigrants who they said were being unlawfully detained at ports of entry.
Mr. Trump\u2019s order, enacted with the stroke of a pen on Friday afternoon, suspended entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days, barred Syrian refugees indefinitely, and blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
The White House said the restrictions would protect \u201cthe United States from foreign nationals entering from countries compromised by terrorism\u201d and ensure \u201ca more rigorous vetting process.\u201d But critics condemned Mr. Trump over the immediate collateral damage imposed on people who, by all accounts, had no sinister intentions in trying to come to the United States.
An official message to all American diplomatic posts around the world provided instructions about how to treat people from the countries affected: \u201cEffective immediately, halt interviewing and cease issuance and printing\u201d of visas to the United States.
Confusion turned to panic at airports around the world, as travelers found themselves unable to board flights bound for the United States. In Dubai and Istanbul, airport and immigration officials turned passengers away at boarding gates and, in at least one case, ejected a family from a flight they had boarded.
Seyed Soheil Saeedi Saravi, a leading young scientist in Iran, had been scheduled to travel in the coming days to Boston, where he had been awarded a fellowship to study cardiovascular medicine at Harvard, according to Thomas Michel, the professor who was to supervise the research fellowship.
But Professor Michel said the visas for the student and his wife had been indefinitely suspended.
\u201cThis outstanding young scientist has enormous potential to make contributions that will improve our understanding of heart disease, and he has already been thoroughly vetted,\u201d Professor Michel wrote to The New York Times. \u201cThis country and this city have a long history of providing research training to the best young scientists in the world, many of whom have stayed in the U. S. A. and made tremendous contributions in biomedicine and other disciplines.\u201d
A spokesman for the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities \u2014 the association of large public colleges \u2014 said that the group was aware of an Iranian undergraduate student who had been barred from boarding a flight.
A Syrian family of six who have been living in a Turkish refugee camp since fleeing their home in 2014 had been scheduled to arrive in Cleveland on Tuesday, according to a report in The Cleveland Plain Dealer. Instead, the family\u2019s trip has been called off.
Danielle Drake, a community relations manager at US Together, a refugee resettlement agency, told the newspaper that Mr. Trump\u2019s ban reminded her of when the United States turned away Jewish refugees during World War II. \u201cAll those times that people said, \u2018Never again,\u2019 well, we\u2019re doing it again,\u201d she said.
On Twitter, Daniel W. Drezner, a professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, posted an angry message for Mr. Trump after the executive order stopped the arrival of a Syrian family his synagogue had sponsored.
In an interview on Friday night on \u201cThe Rachel Maddow Show\u201d on MSNBC, he expressed sorrow for the fate of the family and apologized for cursing in his Twitter message.
\u201cI can\u2019t quite describe the degree of anger that I felt as a reaction to this, which then caused me to curse at the president on social media,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cwhich is probably something I should not do as a general rule.\u201d
It was unclear how many refugees and other immigrants were being held nationwide in relation to the executive order. Lawyers said that one of the Iraqis detained at Kennedy Airport, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, had worked on behalf of the United States government in Iraq for 10 years.
The other man they are representing, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, was coming to the United States to join his wife, who had worked for an American contractor, and his young son, the lawyers said. They said both men had been detained at the airport on Friday night after arriving on separate flights.
The lawyers said they had not been allowed to meet with their clients. \u201cWho is the person we need to talk to?\u201d one of the lawyers, Mark Doss, a supervising attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project, asked a border agent. \u201cCall Mr. Trump,\u201d said the agent, who declined to identify himself.
According to the filing, Mr. Darweesh was granted a special immigrant visa on Jan. 20, the same day Mr. Trump was sworn in as president. Mr. Darweesh worked with the Americans in Iraq in a variety of jobs \u2014 as an interpreter, an engineer and a contractor.
He worked as an interpreter for the Army\u2019s 101st Airborne Division in Baghdad and Mosul starting shortly after the invasion of Iraq on April 1, 2003. The filing said he had been directly targeted twice for his work with the United States military.
A husband and father of three, he arrived at Kennedy Airport with his family. Mr. Darweesh\u2019s wife and children made it through passport control and customs, but agents of Customs and Border Protection detained him.
Mr. Alshawi was supposed to be reunited with his wife, who has been living in Texas. She wiped away tears as she waited in her sister\u2019s house early Saturday in a Houston suburb.
In Cairo on Saturday, five Iraqis and one Yemeni, all of whom had valid immigration visas, according to airport officials, were barred from boarding an EgyptAir flight headed to New York, The Associated Press reported.
It was not clear if any of the six passengers had already been granted refugee status.
In Istanbul, during a stopover on Saturday, passengers reported that security officers had entered a plane after everyone had boarded and ordered a young Iranian woman and her family to leave the aircraft.
Iranian green card holders who live in the United States were blindsided by the decree while on vacation in Iran, finding themselves in a legal limbo and unsure whether they would be able to return to America.
\u201cHow do I get back home now?\u201d said Daria Zeynalia, a green card holder who was visiting family in Iran. He had rented a house and leased a car, and would be eligible for citizenship in November. \u201cWhat about my job? If I can\u2019t go back soon, I\u2019ll lose everything.\u201d
Shadi Heidarifar, a philosophy student recently admitted to New York University, said in a message on Twitter that she had spent three years applying to universities in the United States.
\u201cI had to work to save money, gather documents. The application fees were so expensive that a whole family could live for a month\u201d on them, Ms. Heidarifar wrote. When she was accepted recently, she was elated. \u201cBut now my entire future is destroyed in one second.\u201d<\/p>\n

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