Making haste

Starting with the earliest Biblical texts, God said to love the sojourner. He never said it would be easy.

Security concerns about terrorists entering the United States as refugees or on immigration visas began to climb after Americans watched Muslim jihadists wage attacks in Europe—starting with coordinated strikes in Paris in November 2015. That month presidential candidate Donald Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States, and 31 governors—all Republicans but one—quickly followed, saying they would not allow U.S. officials to resettle refugees from Syria in their state.

Even after the Paris attacker thought to be a Syrian refugee turned out not to be, as initially reported, the concern stuck as ISIS stated it intended to infiltrate the West with terrorists posing as refugees. Trump would later modify his position away from an outright ban on Muslim immigrants, but it was no surprise he would take action to tighten rules concerning refugee and immigrant arrivals.

The surprise was the way he did it. Without formal consultation with Congress or executive branch agencies, President Trump issued the directive at 4:42 p.m. on Jan. 27, suspending at that moment all refugees from entering the United States for 120 days, and barring entry for 90 days immigrants from seven terrorist hot spots.

The order calls on Cabinet officers (most not yet confirmed by Congress) to carry out an extensive review of policies and cuts by half the total number of refugees expected to be admitted in 2017.

“We knew it was coming, but we did not anticipate a total shutdown,” said Matthew Soerens, U.S. director of church mobilization for World Relief, the humanitarian organization founded under the National Association of Evangelicals and one of the nine agencies that contract with the State Department to resettle refugees. Hundreds of refugees already were in transit to the United States that weekend, with housing and other needs arranged by voluntary church organizations and others.

The immediate effect was to deny entry to refugees whose cases the government had resolved—most involving a two- to three-year interview and vetting process—not only from terror-producing states but from war-torn countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo and police states like Myanmar. Under public pressure, the Trump administration later said it would allow into the country 872 refugees who were already in transit. With the federal fiscal year underway since last October, the executive order caps refugees this year at 50,000, down from more than 100,000. More than 32,000 already have arrived since the start of the fiscal year last October, leaving little room for new cases once a review and suspension end.

The order also meant denying upon arrival entry to legal immigrants and nonimmigrants with valid visas. At New York’s JFK airport, among the first in that category were two Iraqis with more than a decade’s experience serving alongside U.S. military personnel and contractors and facing death threats as a result.

While confusion reigned at international airports and among immigration officials, Trump championed the new policy, saying it will particularly aid persecuted Christians from the Middle East: “They’ve been horribly treated,” he told Christian Broadcasting Network the day the order took effect.

Advocates for the persecuted also pushed back against characterizing the order as a “Muslim ban” or favoring Christians. By targeting “religious minorities,” said Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, the order may prioritize Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims, Iran’s Baha’is, or Pakistan’s Ahmadi Muslims.

For now it’s producing ongoing legal battles. Within 24 hours a federal judge in Brooklyn issued a stay on behalf of Hameed Khalid Darweesh, a detained Iraqi translator. Three other federal judges elsewhere followed, issuing injunctions on detention and deportation for specific individuals arriving in their jurisdictions. Of about 350 estimated detained, most were released, including Darweesh, but the legal fight is just underway. The Justice Department—its top staff in transition—faces a Feb. 10 deadline to respond to the first suit.

The order bars entry to the United States from seven countries restricted under a 2016 Obama visa waiver program because of their terrorism problems: Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Somalia, Libya, and Yemen. This meant denied entry for Iraqi Vian Dakhil, a Yazidi lawmaker whose emotional speech in Parliament in 2014 helped prompt President Obama to take action against ISIS. Dakhil was set to receive the Lantos Human Rights Prize at the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 8.

Officials also denied entry to the Chaldean archbishop of Erbil in Iraq, Bashar Warda, whose church has given shelter to thousands of displaced Iraqis and who has served as a spokesman for nearly 200,000 Christians displaced by ISIS in 2014.

“For a lot of reasons, we don’t think this order will help protect persecuted Christians,” said Soerens, “and our Christian faith compels us to help others as well.”

—with reporting by Emily Belz