Thousands of demonstrators gathered at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on Saturday to protest President Donald Trump’s executive order temporarily banning entry to nationals from terror-prone countries.
Though the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) helped obtain a judicial stay of the deportation of several arriving passengers, hundreds of protesters vowed to stay at SFO until those who had been detained were released.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported: “Among the protesters were local politicians, including Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, who held a sign reading, ‘We are a sanctuary state! Let them in!'” At LAX, seven people were still detained by immigration officials as of Saturday night, according to the Los Angeles Times, though at least one woman with a valid green card had been released. Protests were held in other cities, including Chicago and New York.
The executive order, issued Friday and effective at midnight that evening, temporarily bars most visitors and immigrants from seven countries previously identified by the Obama administration as problematic — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen — for 90 days. It also suspends refugee arrivals for 120 days, ends the resettlement of Syrian refugees, and sets a limit for refugees in the 2017 fiscal year at 50,000 people. It represents a fulfillment of a key Trump campaign promise.
Those initially detained at the nation’s airports included several with the legal right to reside in the U.S., apparently including some children who were U.S. citizens traveling with non-citizen parents — prompting criticism of the order’s implementation. At least some of those were apparently later allowed to continue into the U.S.
In 2011, the Obama administration suspended the resettlement of Iraqi refugees in the U.S. after two Al Qaeda terrorists were discovered living in Kentucky as refugees.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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