RUTHFULLY YOURS

If President Donald J. Trump really wanted a “Muslim ban,” as his manic critics insist, he would have barred from the Golden Door the citizens of Indonesia (Earth’s most populous Islamic nation), Bangladesh, and Egypt, for starters.

Instead, of 51 Muslim-majority countries and territories, Trump has placed temporary travel limits on just seven: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. While some 205 million people are affected by this 90-day order, notwithstanding court orders to the contrary, just north of 1 billion people in those 44 other places are as welcome here as ever.

Some “Muslim ban.”

Trump’s executive order actually grants federal officials a grand total of three months to figure out how to give people from those seven states stricter scrutiny — not because they are Muslims, but because those spots are awash in militant Islam.

“We will again be issuing visas to all countries once we are sure we have reviewed and implemented the most secure policies over the next 90 days,” Trump stated January 29. “America is a proud nation of immigrants and we will continue to show compassion to those fleeing oppression, but we will do so while protecting our own citizens and border.”

Trump’s statutory authority to regulate immigration is incontrovertible, unilateral, and virtually absolute. In this area, the unambiguous power of the president of the United States resides in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, popularly called the McCarren-Walter Act. According to 8 U.S. Code § 1182(f):

Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President

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 restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

And, by the way, how did Trump select the seven nations included in his executive order? Did Rush Limbaugh whisper them into his ear at an inaugural ball? Did the alt-right transmit them via semaphore?

Nope.

There are more Iraqis living in the United States than there are in some major cities in Iraq. 156,000 Iraqi refugees have entered this country in just the last decade. 30,000 of those have ended up in California.

In Obama’s first year in office, the United States resettled three-quarters of Iraqi refugees.

71% of Iraqi refugees are receiving cash assistance. 82% are on Medicaid and 87% are on food stamps. Compare those atrocious numbers to only 17% of Cubans on cash assistance and 16% on Medicaid.

It should be obvious why Obama shut the door on Cuban refugees while holding it wide open for Syrian Muslims (but closing it tightly on Syrian Christians), Iraqis and Somalis (77.4% food stamp use).

President Trump’s migration pause was met with lectures about how much immigrants contribute to the economy. But the immigrants that the left likes are a drain. If the left finds immigrants who actually contribute to the economy, it fights tooth and nail to keep them out of the country.

Notable Iraqi refugees include Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi.

Alwan and Hammadi were thoroughly vetted before they were resettled in Nevada and Kentucky. The only omission in their thorough vetting was an unfortunate failure to note that the refugees were terrorists who had spent years trying to kill American soldiers in Iraq.

Alwan had boasted that of how he had “f___d up” Hummers using IEDs and admitted to having taken part in an attack that killed Americans.

He had even left his fingerprints on an IED in Iraq. But the thorough vetting had failed to turn that up.

Alwan and Hammadi tried to send grenade launchers, plastic explosives, missiles and machine guns to the branch of Al Qaeda that would become ISIS. Meanwhile the Al Qaeda in Iraq plotter had quit his job and was living in public housing and collecting public assistance. Like so many other “refugees”.

And law enforcement was soon on the trail of dozens of terrorists who had arrived here as refugees.

President Donald Trump’s executive order barring refugees and citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the US is one of his most popular so far, according to a new poll from Morning Consult and Politico.

The order has a 55% approval rating (with 35% saying they “strongly approve”) with only 38% of voters polled saying they disapprove of it.

Opinions about the ban fall along partisan lines — 82% of Republicans support the ban, while 65% of Democrats oppose it.

The only other executive order more popular than the travel ban is the one revoking federal funding for so-called immigration sanctuary cities. That order has a 55% approval rating, with only 33% disapproving.

Morning Consult and Politico’s poll was conducted between Feb. 2 and Feb. 4.

The seven countries included in Trump’s executive order were first flagged by the Obama administration as “countries of particular concern” for visa screening, but critics have accused the Trump administration of targeting Muslims specifically with the travel ban.

Last week, a judge issued a stay on the executive order which suspends its implementation.

While the travel ban seems to be fairly popular, Trump’s overall approval rating is slipping — only 47% of those surveyed in this poll said they approve of the job Trump is doing, which is down two points from the previous week. His disapproval rating rose five points to 46%.

As our Monday editorial details, there is every reason to believe that the eventual ruling of the Ninth Circuit federal appeals court will control the outcome of litigation over President Trump’s temporary travel ban on both aliens from seven countries and refugees. A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit is considering the Justice Department’s appeal of a temporary restraining order issued by Seattle federal district judge James Robart, which suspends the ban. The panel has announced that it will hear oral argument on Tuesday.

The Ninth Circuit’s determination is likely to be dispositive because there are currently only eight justices on the Supreme Court, a situation that will obtain until the vacancy created by Justice Scalia’s death is filled. It is assumed that the four left-wing justices on the Court (Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan) would vote to uphold Judge Robart’s lawless restraining order. I believe that is an entirely reasonable assumption because, as I’ve been arguing for years now, the Supreme Court operates more like an unelected super-legislature than a judicial tribunal. Like Robart, the politically “progressive” justices make decisions based on the desired policy result, not the law.

This proclivity has led to an assumption, oft repeated in the commentariat, that the Supreme Court would deadlock 4–4 on the case, meaning that the decision of the lower court, the Ninth Circuit in this instance, would stand. I suspect that, for conservatives and other defenders of the executive order, that might be overly optimistic. Notwithstanding that the law is clearly on Trump’s side, there is a very good chance that the swing justice, Anthony Kennedy, would vote with the left-wing bloc – meaning that the administration could lose 5–3 in the High Court.

As anyone who was measuring the Atlanta Falcons for Super Bowl rings late in the third quarter will tell you, the prognostication game is an uncertain business. Still, you may get my drift if you think about the legal theory supporting Trump’s order, and then consider Kennedy’s majority opinion in favor of constitutional habeas corpus rights for alien enemy combatants in the controversial 2008 case of Boumediene v. Bush.

The main principle underlying Trump’s executive order is that the political branches of the federal government have plenary authority over border security, particularly as it pertains to aliens who could pose a threat. There is little or no legitimate role for the courts. The Supreme Court has long recognized that “it is undoubtedly within the power of the Federal Government to exclude aliens from the country,” and that even American citizens and their belongings may be searched without judicial warrants due to the sovereign imperative of “national self-protection.” (I’m quoting the Court’s 1973 decision in Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, which cites many of the Court’s relevant precedents.)

To summarize: Since (a) aliens have no enforceable judicial right to enter the U.S.; (b) the president has constitutional authority to act against potential foreign threats to national security; and (c) Congress, which has indisputable power to prescribe the requirements for alien entry into the country, has delegated to the president sweeping power to deny the entry of aliens whose presence – in the president’s judgment – would be detrimental to the U.S., that should be the end of the matter. The matter is outside judicial responsibility and there is therefore nothing for the courts legitimately to review.

In the President Donald Trump-era, there could be a high-cost to running a sanctuary city…

On January 25, 2017, the President issued an Executive Order denying federal funding to sanctuary cities who choose not to comply with federal laws regarding deportation of illegal entrants.

Reaction to the new policy from across the political spectrum was immediate. However, the politicians, pundits and journalists admitted that the total amount of federal funding was undetermined.

Our organization, American Transparency (website: OpenTheBooks.com) was able to identify that number. We found nearly $27 billion ($26.74 billion to be exact) in federal funding (FY2016) for America’s 106 Sanctuary Cities. Our new report, “Federal Funding of America’s Sanctuary Cites” details federal grants and other forms of federal spending that flow to those cities.

Using our OpenTheBooks interactive map, search federal funding by city. Just click a pin and scroll down to review the municipal agencies and entities (FY2016). In fact, the map is quickly shareable to any website by copy/paste of the HTML code.

Across America, there are over 300 governmental jurisdictions claiming “sanctuary status.” Of those governments, there are 106 cities, while the rest are states, counties or other units of government.

Under Trump’s order, mayors defending their sanctuary city status are essentially imposing a defiance tax on local residents. On average, this tax amounts to $500 per man, woman and child. Major cities like Washington, D.C., New York and Chicago have the most to lose, and nearly $27 billion is at stake across the country.

Irresponsible incendiary rhetoric spewed by politicians and members of the media, in reaction to the executive order signed by President Trump to temporarily suspend the entry of aliens from a limited number of countries that are associated with terrorism, from entering the United States irrespective of whether they had been issued visas, has fired up throngs of demonstrators in New York City and elsewhere.

President Trump began his executive order by noting how failures of the immigration system enabled terrorists to carry out the murder of 3,000 innocent people in the United States on 9/11.

The 9/11 Commission was crystal clear about the ways that failures of the immigration system enabled not only the 9/11 terrorists, but others, to enter the United States and embed themselves as they went about their deadly preparation. We have seen similar attacks in the years since as I noted in my article, “Reflections On 9/11’S Vulernabilities.”

The report, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel – Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.” began with this first paragraph:

It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.

That report should be required reading for all journalists and politicians.

Trump’s action is not without precedent.

The Obama Administration Stopped Processing Iraq Refugee Requests For 6 Months In 2011.

In 1980 then-President Jimmy Carter banned citizens of Iran from entering the United States as the Washington Post reported on April 9, 1980, “Carter’s Visa Crackdown Won’t Hurt Immediately.”

On February 24, 1998, just two days shy of the fifth anniversary of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the U.S. Senate’s Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information conducted a hearing on the topic, “Foreign terrorists in America : five years after the World Trade Center.”

At that hearing Senator Dianne Feinstein hammered failures of the immigration system more than three years before the attacks of September 11, 2001. Her testimony included this statement:

I am also concerned that we need to strengthen further our immigration laws and procedures to counter foreign terrorist operations. I have grave reservations regarding the practice of issuing visas to terrorist supporting countries and INS’ inability to track those who come into the country either using a student visa or using fraudulent documents through the Visa Waiver Pilot Program.