Trump promises overhauled immigration order next week

US President Donald Trump on Thursday said he will announce a new executive order on immigration next week, pressing on with an amended version of the much-criticised travel ban which is now caught up in court.

"We will be issuing a new and very comprehensive order to protect our people," he said at a White House news conference.

Trump said the new order would seek to address concerns raised by federal appeals court judges, who temporarily blocked his original travel ban.

"The new order is going to be very much tailored to what I consider to be a very bad decision," Trump said, adding: "We had a bad court." He gave no details about the replacement order. 

The justice department announced soon after that it wants to drop an appeal against a court ruling that suspended the travel ban targeting nationals from seven mainly Muslim countries as well as all refugees.

"Rather than continuing this litigation, the President intends in the near future to rescind the order and replace it with a new, substantially revised executive order to eliminate what the panel erroneously thought were constitutional concerns," the brief states.

The justice department asked the court to vacate that ruling once the administration has rescinded its original order and issued a new one. In an order later on Thursday, the 9th Circuit put proceedings over the ban on hold but did not say whether it would eventually withdraw its previous ruling.

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals had sided with a federal court in Washington state to suspend the travel ban, while litigation over its legality according to the US Constitution played out.

The ban's stated goal is to keep out terrorists.

The 27 January order was widely criticised as amounting to simply a ban on Muslims, and also for being rolled out sloppily with virtually no warning to the public or preparation of the agencies tasked with enforcing it.

It triggered worldwide outrage as well as protests in America and chaos in the first days of its implementation as people arriving at US airports from targeted countries were detained and sometimes sent back.

Trump on Thursday nevertheless hailed the introduction of the travel ban as smooth. He criticised the court order suspending the ban as "a very bad decision, very bad for the safety and security of our country. The rollout was perfect."