> it has no practical purpose

“One Trump friend and adviser, Tom Barrack, said the president has indicated that the immigration order serves two purposes: one, to keep a potential terrorist out, but two to send a signal to the larger Middle East that the countries there need to take control of the situation at home and stop using a flood of refugees as a bargaining chip to pressure the West.”

(Note: not agreeing with the stated purposes, just pointing them out as hypothesised motivations.)

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-01-30/trump...