The “Muslim Ban” that wasn't. President Trump has been accused of instituting an unprecedented unconstitutional ban on Muslim immigrants that was so flagrant that it was immediately overturned by the courts. So wrong.

On January 27, President Donald Trump made good on one of his signature campaign promises, signing an executive order temporarily suspending — for at least 90 days — the entry of foreign nationals into the United States from seven “countries of particular concern.” Those countries are Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. (In the case of Syria, the suspension is indefinite.) In addition, the order suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) for 120 days, except for those who are already in the USRAP queue and meet the Trump administration’s new, more robust security criteria.

The directive, entitled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” addresses other important related issues, such as requiring foreign governments to demonstrate reciprocity in issuing visas to Americans; requiring U.S. officials to report regularly on the number of foreign nationals in the United States charged with terrorism-related offenses, as well as honor killings and other gender-based violence against women; providing more trained translators to expedite refugee/immigrant processing; and reducing the number of refugees accepted annually from the 110,00 ceiling set by the Obama administration to 50,000 annually. This executive order followed by two days his earlier executive order fulfilling another campaign pledge: to secure our southern border with Mexico by building “the wall.”

Gauging from the explosive worldwide reaction to the president’s order, one might be tempted to think that it must be as “draconian,” “outrageous,” “cruel,” “unconscionable,” and “unconstitutional” as the critics charge. Thousands of demonstrators materialized at dozens of airports across the United States — and around the world — to obstruct traffic and noisily protest President Trump’s “inhumane” order. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and other Democrats bleated that with this action Trump had gone beyond the pale. State attorneys general and the American Civil Liberties Union launched lawsuits against the president to stop the executive order from going into effect. The executive order was signed on Friday, January 27; by Saturday evening the ACLU had found a federal judge in Brooklyn, U.S. District Court Judge Ann Donnelly, who ordered an immediate nationwide injunction to temporarily bar the deportation of all people stranded by the new restrictions.

On February 3, a notoriously “progressive” federal Circuit Court judge in Seattle, Judge James Robart, issued a ruling temporarily blocking the enforcement of the Obama executive order. The Trump administration appealed the ruling, but on February 9 a three-judge panel of the ultraliberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied the administration’s request to lift Judge Robart’s injunction. That was not entirely surprising, inasmuch as the 9th Circuit is notorious as the most outlandishly “progressive” of the federal benches (thus earning the sobriquet, “9th Circus”). The two rulings have been hailed as a badly needed judicial smackdown of an out-of-control president and a victory for human rights, the Constitution, and the rule of law. But is it? Or is it instead an example of blatant judicial abuse that threatens not only our nation’s security, but also undermines our constitutional checks and balances? Getting to the truth of the matter requires unpacking and exposing a number of myths and outright lies that have been purposely propagated by the militant open borders lobby — Soros-funded protesters, radical politicians, media “progressives” and activist judges — to confuse and mislead the public.

Myth #1: President Trump’s executive order is a “Muslim ban.”

Truth: The term “Muslim ban” has appeared so frequently in media stories about the executive order and repeated incessantly over social media that it is widely assumed that this term is in the official text of the order. The ACLU used/uses the term in its press releases and it was adopted by much of the media for use in everything from headlines to story text to broadcast commentaries. However, the term “Muslim ban” appears nowhere in the order. Neither do the words “Muslim,” “Islam,” or “Islamic.” In fact, except for Syria, the order does not even mention the proscribed nations by name, referring simply to the list of seven nations that had already been singled out for special concern by President Obama as leading incubators of terrorists (see below). After a few days of being chastised for misrepresentation on this issue, some of the media began dropping the “Muslim ban” trigger words, to be replaced by references to the seven countries as “Muslim-majority nations” or “predominantly Muslim nations.” This way they can still project the inference that the president is doing something seemingly un-American by allegedly discriminating against foreigners solely based upon their religious beliefs. As we will see below, this media tactic, when wedded to devious polling questions, has been very important in producing poll results that appear to show a majority of Americans oppose the new refugee restrictions.

However, not only does the Trump order not mention Muslims, but his proposed new rules do not affect the vast majority of the planet’s Muslims. Only one of the top 10 most populous Muslim nations (Iran) is affected by the executive order. Here are the 10 largest Muslim countries by population: Indonesia (209.1 million), Pakistan (176.2 million), India (167.4 million), Bangladesh (134.4 million), Nigeria (77.3 million), Egypt (77.0 million), Iran (73.5 million), Turkey (71.3 million), Algeria (34.7 million), and Morocco (31.9 Million). The order also does not affect, for instance, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and other Muslim countries. In other words, the “Muslim ban” meme was a calculated lie, albeit one that Trump injudiciously handed to his opponents by using that term during the campaign.

Similarly, the usual mainstream-media culprits — New York Times, CNN, USA Today, Time, Yahoo News, Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press, NBC, etc. (virtually the entire globalist media herd) — reflecting the hive mentality of the globalist-controlled media, alternately (in headlines, story text, and commentary) continue to refer to President Trump’s executive order as an “immigration ban.” Again, this is a calculated deception (i.e., a lie), since the executive order had nothing to do with, and would not have affected, the vast majority of people from around the world who are involved in the process of legally immigrating to the United States.

Myth #2: The rulings by Judge Robart and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals prove that the Trump executive order is unconstitutional.

Truth : They prove nothing of the sort, they merely prove that far-left activist judges have achieved dominance in many of our courts. Moreover, Judge Robart and the Ninth Circuit did not rule the Trump order to be unconstitutional. They have held that the order "adversely affects" the residents and public institutions of the states bringing suit (Washington and Minnesota) and that the challenges of these states on constitutional grounds would likely succeed on appeal. However, on the same day that Judge Robart issued his decision, U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton in Massachusetts came down on the opposite side, ruling in favor of President Trump and against the ACLU. Judge Gorton held that the president would likely prevail on appeal on the grounds that he has broad statutory authority over federal immigration policy. Many top legal scholars agree with Judge Gorton on that point. “Like it or not, Donald J. Trump was elected president of the United States on Nov. 8, 2016, and sworn into office on Jan. 20, 2017,” constitutional expert Dr. John Eastman noted in criticizing the Ninth Circuit’s ruling in an essay on February 10 for The Hill. “He won the election, in significant part, because he promised to enforce our nation’s immigration laws more vigorously and to enhance significantly the vetting of refugees and other aliens seeking admission to the United States, in order to ensure to the extent possible that terrorists were not coming to our shores.”

“Nevertheless, there is now a concerted effort by many on the left ... to block President Trump at every turn in order to prevent him from implementing the agenda on which he was elected,” says Dr. Eastman, who is the Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law, and the founding director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence. “Regrettably, that effort now seems to include using the courts to achieve political ends that could not be achieved through the electoral process.”

“The 9th Circuit’s order upholding Judge Robart’s nationwide temporary restraining order (TRO) is nearly as bereft of legal analysis as was the original TRO,” says Eastman. For example, he notes “one might have expected some discussion of the relevant statute that unambiguously gives the president the authority to do what he did here.” That statute, Section 1182(f) of Title 8, provides:

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restriction he may deem to be appropriate.

“It does not get much clearer than that, yet the 9th Circuit does not even cite, much less explain away, that statute,” Prof. Eastman charges. And as C. Mitchell Shaw noted in a February 10 online article for The New American (“Trump Travel Ban Unconstitutional? But Obama, Bush, Carter Travel Bans Constitutional?”), President Trump’s order does not go beyond similar orders issued by Presidents Obama, Bush, and Carter restricting travel to the U.S. from some of the same countries. Indeed, an official report issued by the bi-partisan Congressional Research Service titled “Executive Authority to Exclude Aliens: In Brief,” released on January 23, 2017, just days before President Trump issued his “draconian” order, provides details on numerous similar orders by all of his recent predecessors. Even the virulently anti-Trump Los Angeles Times, while opposing the order, admits that previous presidents have also used their executive power to restrict foreign travel to the United States. Relying on the Congressional Research Service report, the Times acknowledged that even the sainted Barack Hussein Obama utilized the same power.

“In issuing his ban on immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries, President Trump relied on a 65-year-old provision of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act,” noted the Times. “The provision gives presidents broad authority to ban individual immigrants or groups of immigrants. Presidents haven’t hesitated to use it. Barack Obama invoked it 19 times, Bill Clinton 12 times, George W. Bush six times and Ronald Reagan five times. George H.W. Bush invoked it once.” (Emphasis added.)

Myth #3: The executive order is “immoral,” “severe,” “onerous,” “inhumane,” and “unconscionable.”

Truth: The order is moral, humane, and eminently sensible, considering the stakes involved and the escalating trend of violent extremist acts by Islamic jihadists all over the world. Remember, these are merely temporary travel and immigration restrictions, not a permanent ban. They are intended to inject some commonsense security measures into our overstressed, overstretched immigration and border security system, which has been leaking like a sieve for decades. They allow us time to evaluate current procedures, identify weaknesses, and fix what is broken. Indeed, the argument can be made that we must go much further than Trump has attempted to go thus far. He has the statutory authority to reduce the annual refugee totals to 35,000, not just the 50,000 limit he set. Unfortunately, some legitimate immigrants and travelers will be inconvenienced (and some may even suffer some hardship), but the paramount duty of the government of the United States is to protect the American people (many of whom are themselves immigrants) from danger, not to solve all the world’s problems.

Despite the hysterical shrieking by the opposition, the charge that the executive order represents a devastating assault on immigration is baseless. “Refugee admissions, asylees, and parolees are all additional to our huge annual intake of 1 million green card holders, the 700,000 foreign workers and the 500,000 foreign students,” Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) noted on October 1, 2015. He added further, badly-need perspective, stating:

• In the last five decades, 59 million immigrants have entered the United States.

• Immigration, including the children of post-1965 immigrants, added 72 million people to the U.S. population.

• One-fifth of the world’s immigrants live in the United States. No other country has taken in more than 1 in 20. We have taken in 6 times more immigrants than all of Latin America, and 10 million more immigrants than the European Union.

• We have permanently resettled 1.5 million immigrants from Muslim countries in the United States since 9/11.

• In 1970, fewer than 1 in 21 Americans was foreign-born, today it is approaching 1 in 7 and will soon eclipse the highest levels ever recorded....

These trends are not sustainable, if America is to survive, let alone prosper and achieve some semblance of social cohesion and harmony. Arguably, President Trump’s executive order does not go far enough; Congress must enact sensible immigration reform legislation that drastically reduces this unassimilable inflow to a reasonable level. And it must impeach those judges who insist on usurping Congress’s authority by unconstitutionally legislating from the bench.

Myth #4: The massive demonstrations throughout the country and around the world prove that “the people” oppose Trump’s inhumane and vicious “ban.”

Truth: The protests and riots over the Trump travel and immigration restrictions should not surprise anyone; they are but the continuation of the violent agenda of the radical anti-Trump forces that we have been witnessing through the past election year and during the inauguration/post-inauguration period. These are not “the people” rising up in a grassroots movement. These are AstroTurf rent-a-mobs financed largely by George Soros and his ilk, as we have detailed in many reports in these pages over the years. This past August, for instance, we reported on the DC Rally for Refugees (“Soros Migration Rent-a-Mob Amps Up for Aug. 28 Wash., D.C. Refugee Rally”), which was a pep rally for the Obama-United Nations Refugee Summit last September. And those events brought together all the same extreme-left groups that are now leading the ongoing protests against the executive order — and every other attempt to fix our broken immigration system. The street thugs who hypocritically chant “Love Trumps Hate” — in-between hateful F-bomb insults and death threats, and while they are physically beating those who disagree with them — are not interested in genuine dialog and peaceful reform; they have openly stated (and proved by their actions) they intend to make America “ungovernable.”

But the bad news for the open borders misfits and their media enablers is that “the people” — the real American people — approve of President Trump’s order. As the liberal-left, anti-Trump news website Vox reported on February 10, “Multiple polls find a majority approval of Trump’s executive order.” This admission against interest by Vox is also important in that it confirms what millions of American voters perceived during the 2016 election campaign: The media are horribly dishonest and biased and the polls are rigged and stacked to support the left-wing agenda.

Vox reported:

Rasmussen and CBS News appeared to produce two very different pictures of American public opinion about Trump’s executive order: Rasmussen’s said that 57 percent of the country supported it, and CBS that Americans opposed it by a 6-point margin.

But the two surveys used crucially different wording. Rasmussen asked respondents if they supported a ban on immigrants and refugees from “Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen” in order to “screen out potential terrorists from coming here.” It does not seem like a coincidence that the poll that showed the most support for Trump’s ban listed the names of seven Muslim-sounding countries and included the phrase “potential terrorists.”

By contrast, the CBS News poll finding broad opposition to Trump’s executive order does not mention the word “terrorist.” Similarly, CBS News found Trump’s executive order became more unpopular when respondents were told that the executive order bans refugees who are “forced to leave their country due to violence or persecution.” In that case, more than half of Americans say they disagree with it.

Yes, as all pollsters know, wording matters! And in this case, as so many others, the liberal-left, anti-Trump, pro-open borders media and pollsters are engaging in psychological warfare against the American people. They want to make it appear that President Trump’s effort to gain common-sense control of our borders does not have public support. They want you to feel that you are an outlier, that your desire to exclude (even temporarily) people from the seven listed countries is heartless, hateful, and bigoted — and at odds with the (supposed) majority of more “compassionate” Americans. They want you to believe “resistance is futile,” so that you will abandon the fight and allow them to win without opposition. These are the same pollsters that virtually unanimously had declared Hillary Clinton would be our next president and that Donald Trump didn't even have a chance.

Myth #5: The Trump executive order will provide no security benefits since no terrorists have come from the seven countries included in it.

Truth: While challenging the basis for President Trump’s executive order, Judge Robarts, during his February 3 ruling, declared that there have been no terrorist attacks in the United States by refugees or immigrants from the countries designated in the order. In making that assertion he was repeating what many in the media had been claiming for days and weeks. A CNN headline on January 29 provided this question and answer: “How many fatal terror attacks have refugees carried out in the US? None.” The Atlantic carried a similar title on the same day: “Syrian refugees have committed zero attacks in the United States.” Vox emphasized the supposedly miniscule threat with this deceptive headline: “Terrorism by Muslims makes up one-third of 1 percent of all murders in the US.”

To its credit, the usually liberal-tilted FactCheck at Associated Press, ruled Judge Robart’s zero-terrorists claim as false. Last year Senator Jeff Sessions and the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest succeeded in prying lose from the Obama State Department a list of 580 individuals involved in terrorist incidents. Committee researchers found that at least 380 of the 580 were foreign-born (71 were confirmed natural-born, and the remaining 129 are not known). At least 24 were initially admitted to the United States as refugees, and at least 33 had overstayed their visas. Of those born abroad, at least 62 were from Pakistan, 28 were from Lebanon, 22 were Palestinian, 21 were from Somalia, 20 were from Yemen, 19 were from Iraq, 16 were from Jordan, 17 were from Egypt, and 10 were from Afghanistan.

Following the judicial rulings against the Trump executive order, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), on February 11, released their own extensive analysis of the government data referred to in the Senate committee report mentioned above. Contrary to the statements of the plaintiffs, the courts, and their media supporters, the CIS study shows that at least 72 terrorists were admitted to the United States from the seven dangerous countries:

• Somalia: 20

• Yemen: 19

• Iraq: 19

• Syria: 7

• Iran: 4

• Libya: 2

• Sudan: 1

• Total: 72

According to the CIS report, at least 17 of these individuals entered as refugees from these terror-prone countries. Three came in on student visas and one arrived on a diplomatic visa. “At least 25 of these immigrants eventually became citizens,” notes the CIS. “Ten were lawful permanent residents, and four were illegal aliens.”

As we have repeatedly reported in The New American (see here, here, and here), top U.S. intelligence officials have publicly admitted that they have no way to conduct genuine security vetting for Syrian refugees, as well as for millions of other migrants and refugees, notwithstanding all of the media propaganda about the “extreme vetting” that supposedly was put in place by the Obama administration.

Myth #6: The security provisions in the Trump executive order are too costly, and, besides, refugees are an economic benefit.

Truth: Alex Nowrasteh, an open-borders libertarian at the Cato Institute, has been quoted widely concerning the supposedly too-high costs of implementing President Trump’s immigration security plan. In a piece entitled “Trump’s Deplorable Travel Ban” for Foreign Affairs, journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, Nowrasteh claims the order “will do almost nothing to improve national security but will impose a great cost on Americans.” He argues that “every dollar spent on screening refugees is a dollar that could have been spent elsewhere on reducing an even greater risk, such as homicide or domestic terrorism.” Others similarly argue that restricting refugee admittance will harm the United States economically by depriving us of their diversity, dynamism, and innovation.

Senator Jeff Sessions pointed out last October, during Senate hearings on the Obama administration’s “refugee surge,” that the data do not support the refugees-as-economic-boon claim. He noted: “Recent statistics from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement indicate that 75 percent of refugees receive food stamps and more than half receive free healthcare and cash welfare. For refugees from the Middle East, the numbers are even higher: more than 90% of recent Mideast refugees draw food stamps and about 70% receive free healthcare and cash welfare.”

The statistics cited by Senator Sessions (now U.S. Attorney General) tell only a small part of the big story on the economic costs of refugees. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, for instance, has a program of Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) for refugees to help them with “1. Home purchase; 2. Small business development; 3. Post-secondary education or training; 4. Automobile (for employment purposes).” Every dollar for those programs must come at the expense of struggling American tax-paying families. And of course, as Nowrasteh pointed out, every dollar so spent on refugees for welfare and “development” is one less dollar that could have been spent reducing security threats to Americans.

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