Dozens of demonstrators from local Muslim and immigrant rights organizations rallied outside San Diego International Airport Tuesday to condemn the Trump administration’s newly enacted travel ban.
They wielded signs reading “No Muslim ban,” “No African ban” and “Refugees are welcome” outside the airport, where the Trump administration’s sweeping new ban had begun blocking travel by citizens of 12 primarily Middle Eastern and African countries a day before.
Visitors from another seven countries face significant restrictions.
“It is shameful, and it bans entire communities as suspects because (of) where they come from,” said Tazheen Nizam, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ San Diego chapter. “It weaponizes fear, turns global issues into excuses and uses them as a cover to justify sweeping, racist exclusions. This isn’t about security. It’s about scapegoating.”
The rally in San Diego joined a handful of demonstrations that have taken place at airports across the country — all against an expansive travel ban that critics condemn as discriminatory.
Demonstrators slam ‘Muslim ban’
San Diego immigration attorney Maria Chavez remembers life under the original travel ban President Donald Trump enacted against seven Muslim-majority countries in 2017. Critics dubbed the “Muslim ban.” For years, she could only watch as her Muslim clients were separated from their families.
“These families were kept apart for four long years for no reason whatsoever, other than the fact that they were from a Muslim-majority country,” said Chavez, who is also the immigration legal director at the San Diego-based refugee organization Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans. “And sadly, we now have to see it again.”
Chavez was among the demonstrators rallying at the airport. A coalition of the city’s Muslim organizations, including CAIR San Diego, the Islamic Center of San Diego and the Muslim Leadership Council of San Diego, united to hold the rally.
Experts say this new ban is an expanded, more methodical version of Trump’s original travel ban — with a longer list of prohibited and restricted countries. As they did the first time, Trump administration officials justified the ban on the basis of national security.
CAIR-San Diego executive director Tazheen Nizam addressed demonstrators beside images of passports from the newly banned countries.“The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas,” Trump said in a video introducing the ban last week. “We don’t want them.”
Demonstrators, however, slammed the new ban as a discriminatory measure that punishes predominantly Muslim and African countries for the fraction of their citizens who have overstayed their visas in the U.S.
Nizam said the “racist” ban will again keep San Diegans with ties to the prohibited countries, like the city’s large Somali community, from reuniting with their loved ones. Spouses, children and parents of American citizens can still travel from the banned countries to the U.S., but it makes no exceptions for extended family members or other loved ones.
“We should not call this a travel ban, but we should call it a Muslim ban,” said Ian Seruelo, an immigration attorney who chairs the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium. “And this is a Muslim ban hiding under some legal and national security pretext.”
Travel ban 2.0
After the hastily implemented 2017 travel ban caused chaos at airports and spawned a wave of successful legal challenges, experts say the Trump administration took more time and effort to craft its new policy. Unlike in 2017, business largely continued as usual at airports on Monday.
Demonstrators and other critics say this makes it more difficult to challenge the ban and open travel back up for citizens of the prohibited and restricted countries — but that doesn’t mean they won’t fight it.
Trump laid the foundation for the ban on day one of his new term this year, when he signed an executive order directing the leaders of numerous government agencies to identify “countries throughout the world for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension on the admission of nationals from those countries.”
Nizam said the new ban cites more “refined, legalistic” reasons for prohibiting or restricting travel from citizens of the 19 targeted countries, like visa overstays, which makes it more difficult to challenge in court.
“They’re using legal justification, saying that, ‘This is enough precedent for us to ban entire populations from these countries,'” Nizam said.
Despite this, demonstrators at Tuesday’s rally pledged to keep standing up against the ban. They called for San Diego community members to tell their Congress members to support the NO BAN Act, a measure proposed in February by Rep. Judy Chu, D-Monterey Park, that would limit Trump’s ability to enact travel bans.
CAIR has also launched a petition in support of the bill, which is currently being considered by a House subcommittee.
“We are talking about community members who are unable to unite with their families that are not able to be here,” Nizam said.
“When you come for one of us, you come for all of us.”
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( ‘This is a Muslim ban’ – airport protest among nationwide rallies against Trump travel ban )
Also on site :
- Northern Ireland riots latest: Petrol bombs and fireworks hurled at police as Ballymena violence spreads
- NYT Connections Sports Edition Today: Hints and Answers for June 12
- Numbrix 9 - June 12