By Stephen Dinan – The Washington Times,

Iraq was the first country to earn its way off President Trump’s travel ban last year, after the administration said it wanted to thank the Muslim nation for agreeing to start taking back its deportees whom the U.S. was trying to oust.

But evidence has emerged suggesting that either Iraq has backslid or the deal was never what the administration said it was in the first place.

Iraq has told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that it will not take back any deportees who don’t volunteer to go back.

For a war-torn country such as Iraq, that turns out to be a huge portion of those the U.S. is trying to oust. It also puts a kink in the Trump administration’s plans to deport hundreds of Iraqis who have been stuck in legal limbo for decades.

ICE has registered its protests, including in a June letter to the Iraqi Embassy in Washington with an “urgent request” to clear a half-dozen deportees whom the Middle Eastern nation had been slow-walking.