‘All is going well,’ Trump says, despite protests
WASHINGTON • President Trump continued to adamantly defend his immigration clampdown as former president Barack Obama took the extraordinary step of entering the public fight over his successor’s policy.
Trump’s order temporarily banning entry into the United States for migrants from seven Muslim-majority countries and refugees from around the world has sparked protests, court cases challenging its constitutionality, unease in cities worldwide and a host of questions about the limits of its scope.
“President Obama is heartened by the level of engagement taking place,”’ Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis said in a statement emailed to reporters Monday afternoon. “Citizens exercising their Constitutional right to assemble, organize and have their voices heard by their elected officials is exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake.”
The statement from Obama’s spokesman breaks with a recent tradition of former presidents refraining from injecting their views into debates about actions taken by a new administration, particularly in its early days.
Refugee groups worried that some 20,000 people could be affected by Trump’s 120-day suspension of refugee admission. Lawyers sought to confirm how many people remain detained in the United States, while a lawsuit argued that dozens of people had been forced to give up their green cards by Customs and Border Patrol agents.
Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said the situation at airports remains “chaotic and fluid” and lawyers are “having trouble independently verifying anything because the government will not provide full access to all the detainees.”
On Monday, in what could be the first volley in an intense legal battle, Bob Ferguson, Washington state’s attorney general, said he plans to file a federal lawsuit seeking an immediate halt to the order’s implementation.
Ferguson is the first state official to declare plans to file such a suit, but he may not be the last. A day earlier, Ferguson joined 15 other state attorneys general in calling the measure unconstitutional. Eric Schneiderman, the New York attorney general who joined in that message, is reviewing possible options “and that could certainly include litigation,” Amy Spitalnick, a spokeswoman, said Monday.
White House officials have played down the anger and chaos over the order. On Monday, Trump used his now-customary morning tweets to blame others for the disorganized implementation and to minimize its impact on travellers.
Several Republicans have spoken out against the ban, including Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain, top defence hawks who issued a joint statement bluntly worrying that the order could “become a selfinflicted wound in the fight against terrorism.”
Criticism also emerged in other quarters. State Department diplomats have been circulating a document objecting to Trump’s order since he announced it Friday. According to a draft version of the memo, the dissenters say the ban will not deter attacks on American soil, but will generate ill will to U.S. citizens.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations on Monday filed a sweeping challenge to the executive order, alleging its “purpose is to initiate the mass expulsion of immigrant and non-immigrant Muslims lawfully residing in the United States.”
In a statement, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees expressed concerns about “the uncertainty facing thousands of refugees around the world who are in the process of being resettled to the United States.”
According to the agency, more than 800 refugees were set to go to America this week but are barred, and the 120-day halt on refugee resettlement could impact as many as 20,000 refugees.
“Refugees are anxious, confused and heartbroken at this suspension in what is already a lengthy process,” the agency said.
In airports around the world, sorrow and relief mixed together as travellers entered an unknown future. Trump’s virtually unprecedented executive action applies to migrants and U.S. legal residents from Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Libya and Yemen, and to refugees from around the world.
Trump wrote on Twitter that Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly “said that all is going well with very few problems. MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN!” In other messages, Trump again cast his order as necessary to protect the country:
“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!
“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!”
The seven countries under Trump’s ban do not include several that have been tied to terrorists involved in major attacks or attempted plots in the United States.