Detainees Released From DFW Airport, Reunited With Families, But This Is Probably Not Over. Friday, President Trump signed “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States,” an executive order banning refugees and visitors from seven primarily Muslim countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. On Saturday, at least nine travelers were detained at DFW Airport and kept overnight. Sparked by brothers Osama and Tarek Al Olabi, hundreds showed up at DFW’s Terminal D to protest the ban and support the detainees and their families.
Judge Ann Donnelly, a federal judge in Brooklyn, issued a temporary stay on Saturday night (more on her here — hey, Avi Selk). Sunday afternoon, the detainees were released and reunited with their families. Mayor Mike Rawlings and Judge Clay Jenkins were there with flowers and apologies. There was something like relief. But, of course, it’s not over. Not the fallout from this Muslim ban, and not from whatever comes next.
If you support President Trump, that is your right as an American. If you support this executive order, again, that is absolutely your right as an American. But this ban is wrong — morally, legally, however you want to think about it. It is not as though the refugee vetting process was not already rigorous, and the case for this action is not supported by the Bible, 9/11, crime statistics, veterans, or the Constitution.
I have, on a few occasions, written about refugees and immigrants — Sudanese “lost boys,” mostly, as well as the mini-United Nations that is Vickery Meadow. Almost all of the people I met had only one thing hanging on the walls of their homes: an American flag. Most refugees have stories like the ones Peter Simek wrote about here. As Bill Holston, executive director of Human Rights Initiative of North Texas, said in that piece, “They are not coming for a better life. They are coming to save their lives.”
Keeping them from doing so is wrong. I’m telling you to resist those who would insist otherwise, which is my right as an American.
