Kathleen Cahill sits in for Tom Hall today.
President Donald Trump signed his first executive order on immigrants and refugees on January 26th, less than a week after his inauguration. It went into effect immediately, leading to chaos – and protests – at airports across the United States. That executive order was put on hold by the courts in February. President Trump signed a revised executive order on immigrants and refugees on March 6th, set to take effect March 16th.
(Just hours after this broadcast, two federal judges -- one in Hawaii and the other in Maryland -- dealt separate blows to the revised travel ban. As a result, its implementation has been temporarily blocked nationwide. )
The revised order is aimed at travelers from a targeted list of majority-Muslim countries, including Libya, Sudan Yemen, Somalia, Syria and Iran. This time around, Iraq is not on that list. No new visas will be issued to people from these countries for 90 days. Like Trump’s first travel ban, Travel Ban 2.0, as it has come to be known, puts the U.S. refugee program on hold for 120 days. That means refugees from all countries will be barred from entering the United States. The question is: Will President Trump's latest travel ban do anything to make the country safer from terrorist attacks?
Kathleen is joined in the studio by two guests who have focused intensely on immigrant and refugee issues: lawyerMarielena Hincapie, Executive Director of the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) in Los Angeles, andBill Frelick, Director of the Refugee Rights Programat Human Rights Watch in Washington, D.C.
Hincapie comes to our Baltimore studio straight from a hearing at the federal court in Greenbelt, MD, where the ACLU and refugee rights organizations, including the NILC, have brought legal challenge to the travel ban.