North Texas Daily

Following the executive order put in place on Friday by President Trump – titled “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States” – there has been public outcry throughout the nation.

The order put an immediate halt to granting any more visas, and it suspended entry of all refugees for 120 days, 90 days for citizens of seven Muslim majority countries and Syrians indefinitely.

The following morning, the nation woke up to a multitude of people being detained at airports across the country. Confusion arose for the people who were already granted entrance and were flying to the U.S. when President Trump put this order in place.

The American Civil Liberties Union created a legal case with the plaintiffs Hameed Khalid Darweesh and Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, who were released after several hours on Saturday.

ACLU won a nationwide stay estimated to help about 200 detainees. Judge Ann M. Donnelly signed this temporary stay stating that implementing President Trump’s order would cause them “irreparable harm.”

Although a victory, this will be short-lived. The stay is temporary and there is no prediction of how refugees and immigrants will be affected in the future by this executive order.

The ban is designed to help secure our borders and put America’s safety first. Kellyanne Conway, one of the counselors to the president, claimed all those detained are about “one percent of the people” who entered the country yesterday, and it is simply “a small price to pay for safety.”

The issue with this ban is that 15 out of the 19 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, a country not being barred. Also, none of the people who committed the terrorist attacks on San Bernardino, at the Boston Marathon or in Orlando were from these seven countries.

What makes this all the more concerning is that President Trump has several business ventures in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which were not on his banned list, and the high terror risk countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan were also left off.

Unsurprisingly, Democrats were outraged with the order. Protests spawned at airports throughout the nation claiming the detainees were welcome.

This order is, at its core, unconstitutional as it unapologetically bans many Muslims from entry, although many are fleeing from dangerous situations. Even President Trump said himself that Christian refugees would receive priority entrance when determining who will be allowed in. This statement in itself is obviously prejudiced. There is no alternate fact or separate interpretation to that.

Hatred and radicalism is bred, and the message this order sends is terrifying because many of the terrorists in the U.S. have been homegrown.

Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham released a joint statement on Sunday denouncing the order as a “self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism.” The statement mentioned how some of our most important allies are the Muslims who reject the terrorist ideologies, and the order sends a message that we don’t want any Muslims in our country.

Charles Kurzman, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, recently released a study titled “Muslim-American Involvement with Violent Extremism.” The report finds that attacks by jihadists accounted for only one-third of one percent of all murders in America last year, despite the heightened fear and belief that we should be more threatened.

The ruling on ACLU’s case from Judge Donnelly claims that the removal “violates their rights to Due Process and Equal Protection.”

We are a country that established due process because we thought it was better to ensure that a free man never gets imprisoned, even if it meant that some criminals walked. There should be no reason to not apply this same philosophy to refugees and immigrants who are innocent despite the acts of a few.

Although it is on a different scale and a little harder to swallow, we can’t just dilute such a complex issue with an executive order band aid. It feels easy to send a percentage back, but it isn’t so simple for them. Many refugees and immigrants wish they could stay in their country with their families and culture, but find it impossible to live in peace.

Featured Illustration: Samuel Wiggins