Protect it? President Trumps travel ban threatens America

It was obvious that Donald Trump would do dramatic things early on as president to shake up an existing order that he and many of his supporters believe is bad for America. But the stunning cruelty and ineptitude with which Trump abruptly imposed a temporary ban on all refugees and on immigration from seven majority Muslim nations — causing commotions at airports from San Diego to New York and nightmares around the world — should give even his admirers pause. Presidencies are often haunted by early missteps, and this one was gargantuan.

Before announcing the new rule Friday, Trump and his inner circle didn’t consult any of the high-powered national-security officials in his Cabinet, including, as reported by The New York Times, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Homeland Security Chief John Kelly. Had they been involved, there is a far better chance that the new policy would have been crafted with more care and might not have accepted the paranoid fiction that all refugees are a security threat with none deserving of kindness. It probably would have pinned down such crucial details as how those with green cards from Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Libya and Yemen would be treated by customs authorities.

Instead, these legal residents of the U.S. faced 48 hours of intense confusion and fear.

There will be many Trump supporters who rally to his aides’ insistence that the media exaggerated problems and that the turmoil at airports was at least as much due to protests and problems Delta had with its computers. But it says something that the American Civil Liberties Union, which raises $4 million online in a typical year, raised six times that this weekend.

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/sd-donald-trump-immigration-travel-ban-20170130-story.html