This week, President Donald Trump is issuing orders to prevent Mexicans and Muslims from entering America. He's targeting Mexicans through his infamous wall, and Muslims through a ban that will largely affect Muslim refugees. Through his one-two punch to decency, the president has brought our nation to one of the most tragic junctures in its history. He is retracting the promise of American freedom to an extent we have not seen from a president since Franklin Roosevelt forced Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II.

It's enough to make the Statue of Liberty weep. Not only do the president's executive orders undermine the bipartisan work of his predecessors, but they also erode the American dream. We at the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, the U.S. organization that works for the kinder and fairer world of which Anne Frank dreamed, are disgusted. Trump is beyond the wrong side of history. He is driving our nation off a moral cliff.

Let's take the refugee crisis first – specifically with regard to Syrian refugees at the center of our national debate. Turning away Syrian refugees and rethinking our entire refugee program is not called national security. It's called prejudice, and it doesn't even help our national security. During his campaign, Trump likened Syrian refugees to a Trojan horse. His rhetoric is not only hateful but also flies in the face of evidence to the contrary.

Millions of Syrian refugees are fleeing Syria because they are being targeted by the Islamic State group, an enemy of the United States and other democracies the world over. Our nation, and the Syrian refugees who yearn to enter, have a common enemy. The logic is clear: What's good for America's security is good for the refugees' security.

When the United States accepts refugees from countries with a significant Muslim population, we undermine the anti-American hatred that underlies Islamic State group recruitment. Closing America's door to Syrian refugees, therefore, is not only a heartless hiccup in our nation's history, it also validates Islamic State group propaganda, advances the group's agenda and drives refugees back into the arms of dangerous terrorists. By turning away Syrian refugees, Trump is plunging America into a national security nightmare.

On the campaign trail, the president demanded a more vigorous vetting process for refugees. News flash: Our nation's vetting process is a nine-step process that spans on average 18 to 24 months. For many refugees, the vetting can take even longer, especially with a federal hiring freeze.

The president's misguided fear of refugees does not stop at those from Syria. His plans will scale back the number of refugees entering the United States from 110,000 last year to 50,000 this fiscal year, a dramatic break from the bipartisan embrace of refugees by Democratic and Republican Presidents alike. Trump's slamming America's doors on the starving, the wounded and the abused is a grotesque blot on our nation's history of freedom.

Now let's turn to Mexican immigrants. Has Trump forgotten that immigrants built America? Did he build Trump Tower without immigrants and without American workers who descended from immigrants?

We can only imagine the answer. When the president finds his back pushed up against a wall by facts, he builds another wall of alternative facts. But the real facts don't support his construction of a Mexican border wall at all.

Trump once tweeted that "the overwhelming amount of violent crime in our major cities is committed by blacks and hispanics [sic]." But according to the American Immigration Council, immigrants are less likely to be criminals than the native-born population.

FBI data indicate that between 1990 and 2013, the foreign-born share of the U.S. population grew from 7.9 percent to 13.1 percent, and the number of undocumented immigrants rose from 3.5 million to 11.2 million. FBI data for the same period indicated that violent crime declined 48 percent.