Republican Sen. Rob Portman spoke out Sunday against President Trump’s executive order temporarily banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, saying the order did not get the vetting it should have before Trump signed it into law.
Portman said he agreed with some of his GOP Senate colleagues who have spoken out against the order, including Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., who called the move “too broad” even though the ban isn’t specifically aimed at Muslims.
“I agree with both of those aspects,” Portman said, noting that it the 120-day ban isn’t a Muslim-specific ban. “However, I think it was not properly vetted, so you have a extreme vetting proposal that didn’t get the vetting it should have had. As a result in the implementation, we’ve seen some problems.”
“I think we should slow down,” Portman said, adding that national security needs to be tightened but that it needs to be done in a way that is “consistent with our values.”
“We’ve got to do it in a way that makes sense,” Portman said. “This was an extreme program that wasn’t properly vetted.”
The Ohio Republican also said that he agrees with the stay issued by federal judges in New York and Virginia to temporarily block the order. He also called for Congress to take action on the issue and pass legislation dealing with the problem at hand.
“I think that’s appropriate,” Portman said about the stays. “Let’s allow those people who’ve come legally into this country to to get out of detention … and let’s take a look at this entire situation … I’m okay with the stay.”
“We’ve got to be part of this,” he said, referring to Congress. “We passed legislation in this regard. We also had bipartisan legislation in January 2016 that didn’t pass the Senate. It passed the House in big numbers that went a little further in terms of some of these procedures, so I think we’ve got to work together on it.”
