‘Couple of dozen’ people still detained: White House

WASHINGTON — The White House on Sunday defended its implementation of President Donald Trump’s executive action targeting immigration from seven Muslim countries and said only two dozen travellers remain detained.

“It wasn’t chaos,” Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” programme, adding that 325,000 travellers entered the United States on Saturday and 109 of them were detained.

“Most of those people were moved out. We’ve got a couple dozen more that remain and I would suspect that as long as they’re not awful people that they will move through before another half a day today,” he said.

Meanwhile, since Trump’s election New York has hosted a string of protests against the new president’s agenda — but few anticipated the rally that developed almost at lightning speed at JFK airport over the weekend.

A small crowd of demonstrators at the city’s far-flung John F. Kennedy Airport swiftly swelled into several thousand.

Alerted by social media and news reports, they held up homemade signs and chanted “Let them in!” late into the night.

Hanna Cowart sat out the January 21 “Women’s March” that, a day after Trump’s inauguration, saw millions take to the streets nationwide.

But now, the 21-year-old said, “it’s becoming difficult for people to be silent.”

Even a federal ruling ordering authorities not to deport refugees and other travellers detained at airports could not soften the mood, with some demonstrators hurling verbal barbs at police who pushed protestors back to the sidewalks. Private car driver Mousa Alreyashi traverses JFK every day, but on Saturday afternoon he decided to stop driving early and demonstrate for the first time. —