Donald Trump issued an executive order Friday suspending the U.S. refugee program for 120 days and barring U.S. entry for 90 days for people from seven countries: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. Trump’s order also states that after the refugee program restarts, Syrian refugees are barred from entry until the president has “determined that sufficient changes have been made to the [U.S. refugee program] to ensure that admission of Syrian refugees is consistent with the national interest.” You can read the full text here.
The order resulted in chaos at some U.S. airports as visa-holders from targeted countries were detained. Hameed Khalid Darweesh, an Iraqi who served as an interpreter for the U.S. military during the Iraq war was detained for 18 hours before he was released. “America is the greatest nation, the greatest people in the world,” Darweesh said upon his release. Two Syrian Christian families were detained at Philadelphia and then put on an 18-hour flight back to Qatar. Late Saturday night, a federal judge blocked the removal of those affected travelers who had already arrived or were in transit to the United States.
There was further confusion about whether or not the order would apply to legal permanent residents (known as green-card holders). CNN reports that the Department of Homeland Security, now headed by former Marine General John Kelly, determined that the order didn’t apply to green-card holders. But according to CNN, Kelly’s department was overruled by White House aides Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller:
So the “White House” (i.e., Bannon and Miller) overruled DHS Sec. Kelly. How? Was the dispute resolved by Trump? Role of Priebus? VP Pence?
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) January 29, 2017
CNN also reported: “Before the President issued the order, the White House did not seek the legal guidance of the Office of Legal Counsel, the Justice Department office that interprets the law for the executive branch. A source said the executive order did not follow the standard agency review process that’s typically overseen by the National Security Council, though the source couldn’t specifically say if that included the decision to not have the order go through the Office of Legal Counsel.” Conservative legal scholar Ed Whelan warned that Trump would be making a “serious mistake” to bypass the Office of Legal Counsel.
During the presidential campaign, Trump said he would implement a total ban on Muslims traveling to the United States, and some journalists and Democrats are now calling Trump’s executive order a “Muslim ban.” But the order doesn’t affect many major Muslim-majority countries, even those with a serious terrorism problem, like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. It’s not clear why President Trump believes the United States can safely vet travelers from those countries but not the seven named in his order. A 2015 law signed by President Obama precludes anyone who traveled to those seven countries since 2011 from taking advantage of the visa waiver program, but that law did not forbid them from applying for a visa.
The text of the executive order states the government shall prioritize the claims of persecuted religious minorities once the refugee program resumes. In 2015, Elliott Abrams explained in THE WEEKLY STANDARD how U.S. reliance on the United Nations hurts Middle Eastern Christians. “The United States has accepted 10,801 Syrian refugees, of whom 56 are Christian. Not 56 percent; 56 total, out of 10,801,” Abrams wrote in September 2016.
While Trump’s executive order would prioritize refugee claims of Christians in the Middle East, it should also give preference to Yazidis, Bahai, and Muslims of minority sects. Here’s the specific language in the order relating to religious minorities: “Upon the resumption of USRAP admissions, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, is further directed to make changes, to the extent permitted by law, to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality.”
Several Republicans criticized the order as overly broad, but a senior GOP congressional aide defended Trump’s order as broadly consistent with a bill the passed the House of Representatives with a bipartisan veto-proof majority following the Paris terrorists attacks:
For a different perspective, read this article by John Podhoretz, who writes at Commentary that Trump’s executive order is based on feelings, not facts.
