Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly took responsibility for the rollout of the executive order suspending travel from seven countries.
“I should have delayed it just a bit so that I could talk to members of Congress, particularly to the leadership of committees like this, to prepare them for what was coming,” he told a House Homeland Security subcommittee panel on Tuesday morning.
Trump’s immigration order, which suspended travel from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen, blindsided congressional leaders, not to mention travelers who were already en route to the United States. That set the table for a political firestorm last weekend, with few GOP lawmakers prepared to defend the policy.
“The desire was to get it out,” Kelly explained. “The thinking was to get it out quick so that potentially people that might be coming here to harm us would not take advantage of some period of time that they could jump on an airplane and get here, or get here in other ways.
“In retrospect, I should have — this is all on me, by the way — I should have delayed it just a bit,” he added.
Kelly’s team continued to revise the policy after the initial order was signed, most notably announcing that lawful permanent residents and dual nationals from U.S.-allied countries would be allowed into the country. The original order provoked strong dissent within the national security community, including hundreds of State Department officials who filed a formal dissent memo arguing that the order would be counterproductive. And it was temporarily blocked by a federal judge who believed, incorrectly, that no one from the seven affected countries has been arrested on terrorism-related charges since 2001.
“The ban … was based on countries that we don’t have any real confidence in right now that they can help us vet people coming to the United States, countries that are in, clearly, disarray,” Kelly said. “We have pretty good confidence [thousands of fighters in Syria] have the kind of papers that could get them passed into western Europe and certainly, by extension, into the United States. So the threat is real, and this pause — that’s what it is, is a pause — will give [the administration] an opportunity to step back and decide what additional vetting we might add to what we already have — which is minimal, in my view.”
Although he acknowledged he should have briefed lawmakers, Kelly also suggested they shouldn’t have been so surprised. “I think most people would agree that this has been a topic of President Trump certainly during his campaign and during the transition process,” he said.
