“AN EXTRA LEVEL OF SAFETY”
by Sharon Rondeau
(Jun. 3, 2017) — At approximately 7:17 p.m. EDT, President Donald Trump responded to the reported attacks in London with a tweet stating, “We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!”
Trump was referring to the travel ban he attempted to institute in order to prevent anyone from a group of Middle Eastern countries with predominantly Muslim populations from entering the United States temporarily.
An initial travel ban signed as an executive order on January 27 was quashed by a federal judge in Washington State and later, by a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The order was then revised to produce the current one, which was immediately put on hold by a federal judge in Hawaii appointed by Barack Hussein Obama.
On May 25, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the moratorium on the proposed travel ban, after which Attorney General Jeff sessions filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court.
In signing the travel bans, Trump was relying on 8 USC 1182(f), which says that the president has the authority to bar any class of aliens from entering the country if he believes that national security could be affected.
Seven minutes after his first tweet, Trump pledged the United States’ support to the UK given the events on Saturday evening.