Trump says immigration order needed to stop ‘bad dudes’

After complaints mounted over the weekend that his executive order led to confusion at airports and even among his administration, Trump tweeted Monday to say that just a fraction of travelers were affected, and blamed the clunky implementation of the order on a Delta computer problem, protesters and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

“Only 109 people out of 325,000 were detained and held for questioning. Big problems at airports were caused by Delta computer, outage protesters and the tears of Senator Schumer,” Trump tweeted. “Secretary Kelly said that all is going well with very few problems. MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN!”

Trump did not cite a source for his claim that 109 people had been detained in American airports in the days since his order.

Later on Monday morning, Trump hit back at critics who said there should have been more consultation with other agencies and Congress before issuing the order. The Trump team has argued that talking about the executive order with too many people would have led to it being leaked.

“If the ban were announced with a one week notice, the ‘bad’ would rush into our country during that week. A lot of bad ‘dudes’ out there!” Trump tweeted.

The executive order handed down on Friday explicitly banned immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen for at least 90 days, to give agencies time to ensure it can verify that immigrants are who they say they are. It also halved the amount of refugees the United States would accept per year and shut down the refugee program for the next four months while it’s reviewed.

Reports over the weekend indicated some refugees and immigrants were either detained or, in some cases, put back on planes and sent back to their country of origin after landing in the United States.

Thousands of people slammed Trump’s order as a “Muslim ban,” which he had promised during the campaign. Protesters again took to the streets in major cities and filled the baggage claim areas of major airports where lawyers worked to see those who had been detained.

Federal judges struck down multiple parts of the executive order during the weekend, though it’s unclear if the stays were being followed by Customs and Border Protection agents.

Delta’s computer outage happened on Sunday night, but did not report any problems on Saturday when protesters jammed several major airports.

Trump said he recognized that it’s not an ideal order but it was necessary.

“There is nothing nice about searching for terrorists before they can enter our country. This was a big part of my campaign. Study the world!” he tweeted.