White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said Sunday the Trump administration will “apologize for nothing” regarding the implementation of the executive order issued instituting a temporary travel ban from seven Muslim-majority nations.
Priebus also said those holding green cards will not be affected by the ban.
When asked why there wasn’t a “grace period” in instituting the order, Priebus told NBC’s “Meet The Press” that they “apologize for nothing” with the implementation, saying they want to keep those who wish to do America harm out of the country.
“I don’t think you want to have a grace period … because then people who want to do bad things to Americans move up their travel two days in order to get into the country before the grace period is over,” Priebus said. “If you ask a lot of the people at the customs and border patrol will tell you you’ve just got to rip off the Band-Aid and you have to move forward.”
“It wasn’t chaos,” he said. “The fact of the matter is that 325,000 people from foreign countries came into the United States yesterday, and 109 people were detained for further questioning. Most of those people were moved out,” Priebus said, adding that a “couple dozen” more remain detained but that he expects most of those to be released with in the next 12 hours. “Perhaps some of these people should be detained further, and if there are folks that shouldn’t be in this country, they’re going to be detained, so — apologize for nothing here.”
The former Republican National Committee chairman also told show moderator Chuck Todd that the order that the oder is “not affecting” those trying to enter the country with green cards moving forward.
According to a report, the Department of Homeland Security initially believed that the order did not apply to those with lawful permanent residence, referring to those holding green cards. However, top Trump aides Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller overruled that guidance, pointing to a case-by-case determination by DHS for green card holders. Priebus argued against that assertion, claiming they did not overrule DHS on the issue.
“We didn’t overrule the Department of Homeland Security. As far as green card holders moving forward, it doesn’t affect them,” Priebus said, noting though that both green card holders and American citizens should expect questions upon arriving at a U.S. airport if they are traveling from any of the seven countries listed.
Priebus also didn’t shoot down the idea of expanding the list to include other nations that were excluded — specifically Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, saying that they could be added later on. However, he said they went ahead with the seven countries listed in the order in an attempt to be “expeditious.”
“You bring up a good point. Perhaps other countries needed to be added to an executive order going forward, but in order to do this in a way that’s expeditious and in a way that would past muster quickly, we used the seven countries that have already been codified and identified by both the Obama administration and the Congress,” Priebus said. “This was all done for the protection of Americans, and waiting another three days and waiting another three weeks is something that we don’t want to get wrong.”
He also said that the fact that Trump owns properties in some nations that were not included in the ban, including Saudi Arabia and Turkey, had nothing to do with the order.
