The flurry of anguished news stories and protests surrounding President Trump’s executive action temporarily suspending “immigrants and non-immigrants” from “countries of particular concern” appears to be part of a coordinated PR effort financed by left-wing billionaire George Soros.

Rather than a complete “Muslim ban” as promised during the campaign, Trump’s executive order contains moderate refugee restrictions, similar to those that have been implemented by President Obama. If reports are true that restrictions are being applied even to green-card holders, that is an unfortunate misapplication of the law that will likely soon be corrected.

Protesters quickly materialized Saturday at JFK Airport, where some refugees were being temporarily detained.

Via Twitchy:

https://twitter.com/CraigRBrittain/status/825434821182697473

Who are these people?

https://twitter.com/CraigRBrittain/status/825439923046014976

“Make the Road” is a NY-based far-left non-profit funded in part by George Soros.

https://twitter.com/abrahamjoseph/status/825424224420581377

According to Breitbart’s Aaron Klein, the signatories to the lawsuit filed Saturday to block Trump’s executive order included immigration lawyers from groups financed by Soros.

At least one case quickly prompted a legal challenge as lawyers representing two Iraqi refugees held at Kennedy International Airport in New York filed a motion early Saturday seeking to have their clients released. They also filed a motion for class certification, in an effort to represent all refugees and other immigrants who they said were being unlawfully detained at ports of entry. The suit was filed by lawyers from the International Refugee Assistance Project, the National Immigration Law Center, the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization at Yale Law School, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the International Refugee Assistance Project (formerly Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project) at the Urban Justice Center. The ACLU is massively funded by Soros’s Open Society Foundations, including with a $50 million grant in 2014. The National Immigration Law Center has received numerous Open Society grants earmarked for general support. The Urban Justice Center is also the recipient of an Open Society grant. Taryn Higashi, executive director of the Center’s International Refugee Assistance Project, which is listed on the Trump lawsuit, currently serves on the Advisory Board of the International Migration Initiative of Soros’s Open Society Foundations.

Reportedly, open-borders advocate Soros has provided some $76 million for immigrant issues over the past decade, as Soros-funded “immigrant rights groups” helped influence President Obama’s immigration policy.

Although it’s being widely reported that the countries included in Trump’s executive order are Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, Iran, and Iraq, the only country that is actually specifically mentioned in the EO is Syria. That’s because the Obama administration had already designated the other countries listed as being subject to restrictions limiting travel, preceding Trump’s “Muslim ban” by a year. The Terrorist Travel Prevention Act was signed into law on December 18, 2015, as part of the Omnibus Appropriations Act of FY2016.

Via Seth J. Frantzman:

The Department of Homeland Security targeted these seven countries over the last years as countries of concern. In February 2016 “The Department of Homeland Security today announced that it is continuing its implementation of the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015 with the addition of Libya, Somalia, and Yemen as three countries of concern, limiting Visa Waiver Program travel for certain individuals who have traveled to these countries.” It noted “the three additional countries designated today join Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria as countries subject to restrictions for Visa Waiver Program travel for certain individuals.”

The media should have known this because pro-Muslim immigrant groups like NIAC Action screamed at the time:

These restrictions have provoked an outcry from the Iranian-American community, as well as Arab-American and civil-liberties groups, who say the restrictions on dual nationals and certain travelers are discriminatory and could be imposed against American dual nationals.

In 2011, Obama banned all refugees from Iraq for six months, and we didn’t hear boo from the same media that is right now apocalyptic.

https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/825399057803837442

After a terrorist plot was thwarted in Kentucky in 2011, the U.S. State Department stopped processing refugee requests from Iraqis for six months in order to review and revamp security-screening procedures:

As a result of the Kentucky case, the State Department stopped processing Iraq refugees for six months in 2011, federal officials told ABC News – even for many who had heroically helped U.S. forces as interpreters and intelligence assets. One Iraqi who had aided American troops was assassinated before his refugee application could be processed, because of the immigration delays, two U.S. officials said. In 2011, fewer than 10,000 Iraqis were resettled as refugees in the U.S., half the number from the year before, State Department statistics show.

So people were delayed by Obama’s restrictions — just as they were by Trump’s restrictions. The only difference is the Obama State Department imposed its policies so “quietly” that the media missed it.

two big differences: 1) pause was not announced at the time, done quietly. reporters only found out years later. 2) not based on religion. — Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) January 28, 2017

Iraqi interpreter Hameed Khalid Darweesh has practically become a household name after the media heralded his detainment at Kennedy Airport Saturday. Darweesh, who put his life on the line for the U.S. military, praised America as the “land of freedom” upon being released from airport detention.

After years of such cases getting caught up in bureaucratic red tape, Congress passed the Special Immigrant Visa program in 2008 and the Afghan Allies Protection Act in 2009 to help expedite visa approvals for heroic Muslim interpreters helping in the war effort.

Nonetheless, the Obama administration was particularly slow in getting these visa applications approved, with thousands of cases stuck in the system for years on end.

It got so bad that in March of 2015, NPR reported that nine Iraqis sued the U.S. government to get their status resolved.

Katie Reisner with the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project at the Urban Justice Center says the hold is probably at the Department of Homeland Security, which vets applicants to make sure they’re not a threat. Reisner says the process shouldn’t take this long.

“All that the lawsuit asks is for the Department of State and Homeland Security to give these plaintiffs an answer,” Reisner said at the time.

According to the lawsuit filed on Darweesh’s behalf, he had been waiting for his visa for over two years when it was finally approved on January 20, Inauguration Day. Darweesh immediately made his way to the United States, where he was temporarily caught up in Trump’s EO dragnet — a PR nightmare for the Trump administration.

Iraq War veteran Brandon Friedman, who served with Darweesh in Iraq, has been acting as his de facto spokesperson, stirring up outrage and indignation about his detainment in numerous interviews in the media. Friedman served in the United States Army from 2000-2004 and then went on to join the Soros-funded anti-Iraq War group “VoteVets.”

In 2007, Friedman, then a spokesman for VoteVets, spearheaded one of the left’s many efforts to “hush Rush” Limbaugh after the popular conservative radio host used the phrase “phony soldiers” on the air in reference to frauds who impersonate real soldiers (otherwise known as “stolen valor”). VoteVets, Media Matters, and others on the left tried to push the lie that Limbaugh was talking about soldiers who opposed the Iraq War rather than real phony soldiers like Jesse Macbeth, who had been recently in the news and discussed on his show. Their efforts culminated with a House resolution introduced by Democrats condemning Limbaugh for his remarks.

Friedman went on to serve as the first director of digital media at the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and deputy assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Obama administration.

You may remember him as the guy who suggested that Bowe Bergdahl’s troopmates were “psychopaths” after they came forward to decry Obama’s infamous trade of five Taliban commanders for Bergdahl’s release in June of 2014.

He now works for his own PR firm, the McPherson Square Group.