Democrats argued on the House floor Monday that President Trump’s executive order barring immigrants from certain Middle Eastern countries undermines the United States’ credibility and national security.
“We in Congress need to stop this order for the sake of our standing in this world as a beacon of hope and freedom and, if for nothing else, to support our troops and our allies in harm’s way,” Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., said on the House floor Monday.
His fellow Connecticut Democrat, Rep. Jim Himes, noted that Muslims are already being detained as a result of the order. An ophthalmologist at Yale New Haven Hospital in his district was in the Bahamas performing cataract surgeries for charity when Customs and Border Control arrested him, Himes said.
He was there “stepping forward as all that we think is best about a country that was founded and strengthened by immigrants, abroad doing God’s work as an ambassador, informal though he may have been, that America is a good and decent place,” Himes said from the House floor.
The doctor is a native of Aleppo, which has seen some of the worst fighting among ISIS fighters, government troops and rebel forces in Syria, and was ultimately allowed to return to his home in Connecticut.
But the most egregious story he’s heard, so far, was that of an elderly woman in her 80s who was stopped on her way to the United States to visit her son who is a sergeant in the 82nd Airborne Division.
“She spent 33 hours in detention, some of those hours handcuffed — this mother of an 82nd Airborne soldier, handcuffed because of the actions of President Donald Trump,” Himes said.
“I know a little something about national security,” said Himes, a member of the House Intelligence Committee. “And the executive order signed by President Trump on Saturday is not only not about national security, it’s profoundly dangerous to the security of this country as it gives our enemies a logic to say: ‘the United State is bigoted, is anti-Muslim, it does not stand for its principles.'”
“It’s dangerous security theater” that has radical Muslims around the globe proclaiming: “we told you so,” Himes said.
