A US judge yesterday granted an emergency stay against US President Donald Trump's order banning citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the country, local media reported.

The ruling by a court in New York means those already in the country, who are in transit and who have a valid visa, can stay, according to CNN.

The lawsuit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of two Iraqi men who had been detained at John F Kennedy Airport in New York, according to website Mother Jones.

The stay is temporary and another court will have to decide whether to make it permanent.

The decision came amid reports of refugees and those with valid visas being detained at airports around the US and of other travellers being prevented from boarding flights to the US.

Earlier, Trump insisted his order, which suspended the US refugee admissions programme for four months, blocked Syrian refugees indefinitely and barred entry to all travellers from the seven countries for 90 days, was "not a Muslim ban."

"It's not a Muslim ban. We were totally prepared. It's working out very nicely," Trump told reporters during a photo opportunity at the White House in remarks quoted by CNN.

"You see it at the airports. You see it all over. It's working out very nicely and we're going to have a very, very strict ban, and we're going to have extreme vetting, which we should have had in this country for many years," Trump said.

- dpa