Protesters rally at Detroit Metro Airport against Trump's Muslim ban

Huge snowflakes fell at Detroit Metropolitan Airport Sunday as hundreds of protesters carrying signs gathered to protest President Donald Trump's executive order to ban the entry of people from seven Muslim-majority countries and suspended the entry of refugees.

Carrying signs that said "Christians supporting Muslims," "Resist," and "No Ban!" they chanted: "No hate! No fear! Immigrants are welcome here" on two levels of the McNamara Terminal near the international arrival and departure areas.

Their cries could be heard above the roar of jet engines.

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"This is where the march became a movement," said Phoebe Hopps, one of the Michigan coordinators for the Women's March on Washington, who also organized Sunday's airport protest. "Rooted in the promise of America’s call for huddled masses yearning to breathe free, we believe in immigrant and refugee rights regardless of status or country of origin. We believe migration is a human right and that no human being is illegal. We stand with our Muslim sisters and brothers, and reject the path of xenophobia and extreme vetting.”

Hopps, who lives in Traverse City, scrambled Saturday evening for a permit from the Wayne County Airport Authority to stage the protest. It was one of three protests Sunday in the metro Detroit area and among at least five in the state.

Trump's executive order suspends the entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days. Syrian refugees are indefinitely barred from entering the country, and those from the following Muslim-majority countries are barred from entering the U.S. for three months: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

For Ayah Kutmah, 18, a student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, it's personal.

"My parents are Syrian," she said, having just arrived at Metro Airport Sunday from her hometown of Louisville, Ky. She protested there before she got on her plane, and then joined the marchers in Detroit when she landed. She held a sign that said "Welcome" in English and in Arabic. "This ban is really personal to me, and to my family."

Inside the airport, the din of the protest could be heard as a group of 11 men took off their shoes, lined up and prayed in front of the international check in area of the McNamara Terminal.

Through the glass outdoors, Mohamed Hafiz, 55, of Canton, chanted "No ban! No wall!"

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"I am here to protest the ban on Muslims entering the United States," said Hafiz, who was born in Egypt. "I am a Muslim. I came to the United States and was naturalized. I pay my taxes. I contribute to society. If we ban Muslims, who's next? It's a slippery slope."

Earlier there were protests in Dearborn and Hamtramck, but the Metro Airport protest was by far the largest with an estimated 2,500 gathering in different parts, including hundreds who packed into the baggage claim area.

The executive order, which Trump said was to protect Americans from terrorist attacks, singled out Syrian refugees as "detrimental to the interests of the United States."

The move, he said, will give his administration time to establish a more selective screening process to "keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America. Don't want them here," he said.

But Elise Garcia, an Adrian Dominican nun who was at Sunday's protest at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, said the executive order makes the nation less safe.

"This is not what we stand for as Americans, and it's not what we stand for as Dominicans. ... It's fundamentally un-American, and it's not making us safer. In fact, it's quite the opposite."

Garcia said many Dominican sisters are living now in Iraq, and they are fearful about what the future holds for them and their own safety as Iraq is on the list of nations that fall under the ban.

"The whole situation is being even more destabilized than it was. It's fair to say that every Dominican sister would be here today protesting if she could."

Yet, in brief remarks Saturday, Trump maintained the order isn't a "Muslim ban."

“It’s working out very nicely. We’re going to have a strict ban, and we’re going to have extreme vetting, which we should have had in this country for many years," he said.

The fallout struck with full force Saturday, blocking some travelers from boarding their planes overseas, compelling others to turn around upon arrival in the U.S., and prompting customs agents at JFK Airport to detain at least a dozen people, including a former Iraqi translator for the U.S. military in Baghdad.

At the Port Huron-Sarnia border crossing, the ban caused some confusion for an Iraqi-born immigration attorney from West Bloomfield and her husband. The couple was detained for hours Friday night and early Saturday trying to return to the United States.

The growing chaos also sparked legal challenges from the American Civil Liberties Union and other legal groups along with protests, condemnations from politicians and denunciations from advocacy groups.

The executive order ran into at least a temporary roadblock Saturday night, when a U.S. District judge granted an emergency stay, halting the part of Trump’s executive order that barred citizens from those seven countries for the next 90 days. The judge’s ruling applies to those who have already arrived in the U.S. and those who are in transit who hold valid visas.

Opponents say the ban is Islamophobic, and reminiscent to a dark time in American history, when Japanese-Americans were interred in relocation camps during World War II.

“This ban is more than just a Muslim ban. It is an attack on our American values, our constitution, and on millions of American families," Sumaiya Ahmed, spokeswoman for the Royal Oak-based Michigan Muslim Community Council. "Now is the time to organize, and to help uplift one another. We cannot allow our core American values to be diminished. We must stand together in unity with our brothers and sisters of different backgrounds against injustices, and practice our American right to protest peacefully.”

For Fatima Salman, also a member of the Michigan Muslim Community Council, this protest is about the very core of American beliefs.

"I keep going back to what's inscribed on Lady Liberty," she said, referring to the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Contact Kristen Jordan Shamus: 313-222-5997 or kshamus@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @kristenshamus. USA Today contributed to this report.