During his campaign for office, President Donald Trump promised to vet immigrants to the United States much more thoroughly than his predecessors and vowed that he would stop letting people in from certain countries temporarily “until we can figure out what’s going on.”
True to his word, Trump signed an executive order mandating both such actions, instituting an “extreme vetting” procedure and suspending nearly all refugee admissions to the U.S. for 120 days. Travel from seven countries that have majority-Muslim populations — Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Sudan and Iran — will be on hold for the time being.
It should be noted that under former President Barack Obama, the U.S. was bombing all of those countries except for Sudan and Iraq as recently as last year, so preventing possible retaliatory terrorism from migrants from these states is likely a wise idea. Certain Syrian immigrants, in particular, would be indefinitely barred from entering the U.S.
While Democrat critics were quick to attack Trump’s actions as “racist,” and called them “a ban on Muslims” entering the country, in fact they are neither; Muslims can still come and go to and from the U.S., and travel is allowed to and from other Muslim countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia.
Trump was unfazed by the comments. Mincing no words, he said the orders were meant “to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America. We don’t want them here.”
At the same time, Trump specifically mentioned prioritizing the admission of Christians from Syria. “They’ve been horribly treated. Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, at least very tough, to get into the United States? If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible, and the reason that was so unfair; everybody was persecuted in all fairness, but they were chopping off the heads of everybody, but more so the Christians. And I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them.”
Republicans cheered the president’s actions, with House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul of Texas telling Fox News that “it’s a safer day for America.”
But Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Association, called the orders unconstitutional. “‘Extreme vetting’ is just a euphemism for discriminating against Muslims,” Romero stated. “Identifying specific countries with Muslim majorities and carving out exceptions for minority religions flies in the face of the constitutional principle that bans the government from either favoring or discriminating against particular religions.”
According to Abed A. Ayoub, the policy and legal director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, “These actions taken by Donald Trump are tantamount to a Muslim ban. This is the Muslim ban that was promised by him on the campaign trail.”
However, Ayoub’s words are an exaggeration. In an interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity, President Trump defended his orders. “Right now, the FBI has over 1,000 [terrorism] investigations going on … and these are people that we let in. We don’t need this. Some people have come in with evil intentions. Most haven’t, I guess, but we can’t take chances. We know nothing about them,” he said.
“They can say they vetted them. They didn’t vet them; they have no papers. How can you vet somebody when you don’t know anything about them, and they have no papers?”
Indeed, under ex-President Barack Obama, the U.S. accepted 84,995 refugees in the last fiscal year; more than 12,500 were from Syria. For the next fiscal year, Obama had raised the bar to 110,000 total refugees. Sources close to Trump have said he would like to cut that number by more than half to less than 50,000.
But even worse than Obama’s attempting to admit more dangerous refugees is his hypocrisy regarding Trump’s policy. It’s a fact that when it comes to visas for Iraqis, Obama banned them for even longer than 120 days.
Back in 2009, it was discovered that the U.S. had admitted two terrorists from the group al-Qaeda in Iraq as refugees, and they were living off of government benefits in Bowling Green, Kentucky. In court, the pair admitted that they had killed U.S. soldiers in Iraq, both with bombs and as snipers.
In Kentucky, the FBI taped the two men talking about using bombs to attack American soldiers who’d returned home from the war. The FBI immediately had to mount a round-the-clock effort to check fingerprints in its archives of 100,000 improvised explosive devices (IEDs) against those in the database of other refugees admitted to the United States.
Obama’s State Department then banned visas for Iraqis for six months. “We are currently supporting dozens of current counter-terrorism investigations like that,” said FBI Agent Gregory Carl at the time on ABC News’ “World News with Diane Sawyer.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if there were many more than that,” claimed the aforementioned Senator McCaul. “And these are trained terrorists in the art of bomb making that are inside the United States. And quite frankly, from a homeland security perspective, that really concerns me.”
Bowling Green Police Chief Doug Hawkins was outraged. “How do you have somebody that we now know was a known actor in terrorism overseas, how does that person get into the United States? How do they get into our community?”
Partially in response to the Bowling Green incident, the Obama administration took action, albeit several years too late.
It was Obama who came up with the list of countries that Trump’s executive order applies to; the fact of the matter is that Trump’s executive order doesn’t specify countries by name because it applies to those already affected by Obama’s visa suspension laws of 2015 and 2016.
In 2015, Obama’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) termed the countries Iraq, Iran, Syria and Sudan “nations of concern” and restricted visas for citizens traveling to and from them.
In 2016, Obama’s DHS expanded those restrictions to include Libya, Yemen and Somalia. It should be noted that many of the same Democratic senators and Congress people complaining about Trump’s order are the same ones who passed the 2015 Visa Waiver Program and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act that Obama signed in the first place, authorizing DHS’s restrictions.
After Trump’s executive order was signed, clueless progressives around the country took up the issue and placed blame for the actions squarely at Trump’s feet, ignoring the previous efforts of Obama and Congress.
Many protested at international airports in New York and Washington, D.C., and former President Obama even cynically released a statement supporting them, saying that he was “heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country” and that “American values are at stake.”
When Trump’s executive order was signed, acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates — an Obama appointee who was only in her role pending the confirmation of Senator Jeff Sessions as Trump’s Attorney General — told lawyers in the Justice Department not to defend the order.
In response, the Trump administration said that Yates had “betrayed” the department by refusing her responsibility to enforce an order that was “designed to protect the citizens of the United States.”
“Ms. Yates is an Obama administration appointee who is weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration,” said the White House press secretary’s office. “It is time to get serious about protecting our country. Calling for tougher vetting for individuals traveling from seven dangerous places is not extreme. It is reasonable and necessary to protect our country.”
Trump ordered Yates to be fired and immediately replaced her with Dana Boente, the U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, who stated, “I am honored to serve President Trump in this role until Senator Sessions is confirmed. I will defend and enforce the laws of our country to ensure that our people and our nation are protected.”
In the meantime, protests and legal actions — including a proposed class-action lawsuit — regarding the ban continue, despite more than 30 percent of all Americans feeling the travel ban makes them “safer” and at least half of Americans agreeing with the ban, according to surveys.
