photo from Indystar.com
Indianapolis has joined a wave of protests nationwide calling for the reversal of President Trump’s travel ban.
More than a thousand protesters lined the perimeter of the baggage-claim area at Indianapolis International Airport, denouncing the ban on immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries as un-American and unconstitutional.
Democratic Congressman Andre Carson and Muslim Alliance of Indiana executive director Rima Shahid both charge the ban is an attempt at legally sanctioned religious discrimination. Indianapolis rabbi Dennis Sasso says he’s “repulsed” that Trump’s executive order on Friday coincided with Holocaust Remembrance Day, and compared the ban on refugees with the obstacles encountered by Jews attempting to flee Germany before World War Two.
Sasso says the ban should be reversed “in the name of sanity, justice, and compassion.”
More than 100 foreign nationals with valid U-S visas have been detained at U-S airports since the ban was issued. The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement Sunday evening saying green-card holders would be exempted from the ban. The American Civil Liberties Union says there have been no detentions in Indianapolis. Executive director Jane Henegar notes the airport is not a common port of entry for immigrants. The airport has no direct flights from outside North America.
But Cole Varga with Indianapolis-based Exodus Refugee Immigration, which successfully sued then-Governor Mike Pence last year for attempting to block Syrian refugees from entering Indiana, says the status of 26 refugees scheduled to arrive next month is now in doubt.
Carson and Democratic Senator Joe Donnelly stopped by the rally to offer their support. Both call the current vetting process for immigrants the world’s best — Donnelly says the Trump ban won’t make the country safer, but will give extremist groups a recruiting tool while making it more difficult to find allies on the ground. He notes one of the first people detained under the ban was an Iraqi who received a visa for his service as an interpreter for U-S troops.
Congresswoman Susan Brooks was the first Republican in Indiana’s delegation to publicly question the ban, saying in a statement that increased scrutiny of immigrants from terrorist strongholds is appropriate, but that she opposes “a religious test for immigrants or refugees.” She called on the White House to supply more “information and clarity” about the order.
Purdue president and former governor Mitch Daniels was more blunt, issuing a statement calling the ban “a bad idea poorly implemented” and calling on Trump to “revoke and rethink it.” Purdue says about 100 students and 10 faculty members are potentially affected by the order, and is cautioning them not to leave the U-S until new guidelines are issued.
