US rights groups have warned that an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump on Monday would reimpose a ban on travelers from Muslim-majority or Arab countries, Reuters reported.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said the new order relies on the same legal authority used to justify Trump’s 2017 travel ban and allows “broader scope to use ideological exclusion to deny visa applications and exclude individuals” who have already arrived in the United States. The committee announced a new 24-hour hotline to help those affected.

The National Iranian American Council said Trump’s order “to protect the United States from foreign terrorists and other threats to national security and public safety” would separate American families from their loved ones and reduce college enrollment in the United States. The council has set up a new website on the issue.

The executive order Trump signed Monday, amid a series of other measures, sets a 60-day deadline for senior State Department and Justice Department officials and intelligence and Homeland Security officials to identify countries whose vetting and screening processes are “so deficient that entry by nationals of those countries should be suspended in part or in full.”

The order is broader than Trump’s 2017 ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries, adding language that bars people from obtaining visas or being allowed to enter the United States if they “harbor hostile attitudes toward its people, culture, government, or founding principles,” and establishing a process that could disqualify visa holders granted since 2021.

The White House did not respond to inquiries raised in this regard.

The new order would give the government “a great deal of unfettered authority” to deny a range of visas for students, workers and educational exchange participants, Joseph Burton, a former State Department official who worked in visa administration, said during a teleconference organized by the National Iranian American Council.

The committee’s executive director, Abed Ayoub, told the agency that the committee would decide in the coming days whether to challenge the order in court. He added that it sets a “very dangerous precedent” that could be used against right-wing groups if a Democratic administration takes office in the future.

“This will allow people to be excluded from the United States based on what they say, what they express, or their positions,” he added. “If they attend a protest that the administration might deem hostile, their visas will be revoked and deportation proceedings will begin.”

Trump has repeatedly said he would apply the travel ban to people from certain countries or with certain ideologies, expanding a policy upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018.

During his election campaign, he said he would reimpose a travel ban on people from the Gaza Strip, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and "anywhere else that threatens our security."

He made it clear that he would also seek to prevent communists, Marxists, and socialists from entering the United States.