Trump travel ban

Protestors at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth Airport

The wall has already been built.

Not the one between us and Mexico, the one President Trump threatened to finance by starting a silly and unnecessary trade war.

No, I mean the wall between the White House and the nation its inhabitant was elected to lead.

The wall between the White House and facts, not alternate ones.

The wall between the White House and, well, a welcoming land known for compassion, encouragement and love thy neighbor....

And it was built in just over a week.

Protesters gather at O'Hare International Airport after people were detained, including green card holders, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2017, in Chicago. They were detained following President Donald Trump's executive order on Friday that bans legal U.S. residents and visa-holders from seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the U.S. for 90 days and puts an indefinite hold on a program resettling Syrian refugees. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune via AP)

Each day of this Presidency has seemed more inane than the day before. That is quite a feat, given the you-gotta-be-kidding first few days when the President and his pit bull, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, snarled over things as banal as crowd size and insipid as blaming (nonexistent) voter fraud for Trump losing the popular vote last November.

We were also peppered with thinly vetted executive orders picking at the Affordable Care Act and pro-choice, and threatening to withhold federal funding from our nation's sanctuary cities, to just name a few.

On Wednesday, Trump signed an order to begin building a wall along the Mexico border--without as much as a clue as to how much it will cost, whether it will actually be effective and, most important, who will pay for the darn thing.

Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto had to practically scream at our tone-deaf leader that, no Mexico, will not pay for the darn wall. Then, the auto industry (among others) screamed when Spicer casually tossed out the childishly simplistic idea that a 20-percent tariff on Mexican imports would pay for the wall, seemingly without any understanding of the complexity and magnitude of the implications and repercussions of such a move.

None of this was a surprise, of course. Or it shouldn't have been. With his explosion of executive orders, Trump was fulfilling rants he made on the campaign trail, whether they make a single bit of sense or not. Whether they are legal or not. Or practical.

It was if he was dictating the construction of yet another eponymous property when he had no intention of paying contractors of other vendors. Again.

Then came Friday, one week to the day of Trump's inauguration and an "America First" speech in which he vowed to show the world just how it's done: "We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow," he said.

Dozens of demonstrators march in and around the main terminal at Portland International Airport, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2017, to protest President Donald Trump's order barring nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. (Mike Zacchino/The Oregonian via AP)

Well, that "example" has dimmed into darkness.

The day began with a statement that should have been an easy, innocent no-brainer: commenting on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Alas, the statement didn't mention Jews or anti-Semitism, which, is akin, yes, to "remembering" slavery without mentioning Africans, their descendants born in this land or racism.

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus quickly tried to justify the omission, citing the statement's reference to "victims, survivors, and heroes of the Holocaust" as honoring all who were ravaged by that evil chapter of history, including the not-mentioned six million Jews. "I don't regret the words," he told Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press."

Then later that day, Trump signed an order fulfilling another reckless campaign pledge: to stop Muslims from entering the U.S., which he claimed would make us safer.

He banned nationalists from seven predominantly Muslim nations (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen) from entering the United States for 90 days. The order also banned all refugees for 90 days, and all Syrian refugees indefinitely.

Thus, with a stroke of a pen, Trump ignited a firestorm.

Travelers to destinations nationwide--law-abiding, U.S.-inhabiting, hard-working travelers--were instantly detained by immigration officials, prompting an outcry we hadn't seen in, oh, about a week.

Protesters once again donned their walking shoes, picked up their hastily made signs and loosened their lungs and railed against Trump at airports and cities from Boston to San Francisco. And in, Birmingham, where hundreds of protesters--representing the wide breadth of the city's faiths and ethnicities--marched through Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport on Sunday afternoon.

A man joins hundreds of demonstrators opposed to President Donald Trump's executive order barring entry to the U.S. by Muslims from certain countries at the Tom Bradley International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport Saturday, Jan. 28, 2017, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

Their chants and signs were similar were similar to those heard and waved across the nation.

No ban, no wall!

We are all immigrants!

We will not be silent!

They called the order everything from immoral to illegal, unconstitutional to un-American, to just plain stupid.

They were right.

Innocent men, women, and children who had been living legally in this country were being detained for hours. That included green-card holders (although they were spared on Sunday when Priebus, who's gonna need dancing shoes for all the moonwalking he's doing, said green-card holders were no longer subject to the ban.)

Many were undoubtedly frightened, wondering what had just happened to the nation they embraced, where some have raised children and lived and worked for years. Some detainees were even slated for deportation until a federal judge stepped forward to say, stop--or at least slow down this insanity.



The order created yet another conundrum for Trump's fellow GOPers, who found themselves, without warning, in the crosshairs of an action that is difficult to defend. By late Sunday, almost a dozen Republicans publically opposed the ban.

"While I've supported heightened vetting procedures for those wanting to travel to our country, I have never, nor will I ever support a blanket travel ban for people solely based on ethnic or religious grounds," said Rep. Mike Coffman of Colorado.

Protesters assemble at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2017 after two Iraqi refugees were detained while trying to enter the country. On Friday, Jan. 27, President Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending all immigration from countries with terrorism concerns for 90 days. Countries included in the ban are Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen, which are all Muslim-majority nations.

Added Rep Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania: "The president's policy entirely misses the mark."

Certainly, Trump's action has supporters--many of them people who long-ago injected the campaign's fear-fostering rhetoric deep into their veins. They truly believe in their souls the alternate fact that walls and travel bans will make us safer when the preponderance of crimes, including acts of terrorism since 9/11, are committed by American citizens.

They also mistakenly equate travel restrictions previously taken by administrations under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama with Trump's action. Both targeted only one nation--Iran and Iraq, respectively. Neither targeted nations based on religion and nationalists from both nations could apply for visas.

Refugees and the danger they supposedly present to our safety are yet another "boogie man" created by Trump's campaign rhetoric.

A 2015 study by the Migration Policy Institute revealed that while nearly 800,000 Syrian refugees have been admitted to the U.S.--with an already rigorous vetting process that can take up to 36 months--only three were arrested for planning (not executing) terrorist activities. Two were planned for attacks outside of the U.S. and the third was deemed "barely credible," according to the report.

In an impassioned response to detainees in his own city, Dallas mayor Mike Rawlings said: "...on many, many fronts this is ill-thought out. It's bad policy, it's bad for business, it's bad for families, it's bad for cities and it's bad for the heart. We as people are defined not by how we treat ourselves, but how we treat the other. Today is a great failing of America in that regard."

Indeed, that we are a nation of immigrants isn't a cliche or an alternate fact. It is a truth imbedded at the core of our DNA, within all of us who are not Native Americans.

All of our ancestors came from somewhere else, whether hopeful of a new life as they arrived in boats greeted by the Statue of Liberty or fearful of what manner of hell lie ahead as they laid in chains in the hull of a ship.

It is what binds us, even as we continue to struggle with it.

That truth appears to be lost on the Trump administration, which has quickly hastily constructed a wall between itself and its loyal followers, and the preponderance of Americans who embrace our quilt-like diversity rather than fear it.

As a developer with buildings bearing his name shaping skylines across the globe, the President should be fully aware of the fate of shoddy workmanship, of walls built without foundation, reinforcement or the strongest support.



The slowly erode, weaken and eventually crumble.



