In a speech Wednesday, President Trump read the federal statute that he said gave him authority for the “extreme vetting” executive order and said a “bad high school student can understand this.”
“Anyone would understand this,” Mr. Trump told a conference of police chiefs and sheriffs from major cities. “This is for the security of the country. You’re the chiefs, you’re the sheriffs; you understand this.”
The Justice Department argued Tuesday before a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to lift the stay on a policy to temporarily block visitors from seven predominately Muslim countries and refugee settlements in the U.S.
The court appeared focused on whether it was a Muslim ban. In the speech Mr. Trump said he watched the arguments on TV and was dismayed.
“It would be so great for our justice system if they would read the statement and get it right,” the president said.
Mr. Trump said that he would refrain from calling the judges “biased,” but said he was particularly put off by questions posed by one of the judges on the San Francisco-based court.
The president twice took to Twitter on Wednesday to defend his restrictions, in one case saying Americans can “never” have the needed safety and security if the administration loses the legal battle.
“If the U.S. does not win this case as it so obviously should, we can never have the security and safety to which we are entitled. Politics!” Mr. Trump tweeted.
He warned later on Wednesday of a surge in visitors from “certain areas” in the wake of court rulings: “Big increase in traffic into our country from certain areas, while our people are far more vulnerable, as we wait for what should be EASY D!”
The president didn’t say which areas he was referring to, but seemed to be indicating they were the seven countries he singled out as needing extra scrutiny: Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Libya.
Tony Blinken, a former White House deputy national security adviser under President Obama, slammed Mr. Trump’s speech and said federal judges are simply doing their job.
“Today was a sad day, listening to the president attack the judiciary once again,” Mr. Blinken said on CNN.
In his speech to the sheriffs, Mr. Trump read from the 1952 statute under the title “Inadmissible aliens” that spells out the president’s authority to suspend entry to the U.S. or impose restrictions. The statute reads:
“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.”
Mr. Trump said the intent of the law was clear.
“It just can’t be written any plainer or better,” he said. “I think it is a sad day. I think our security is at risk, and it will be at risk until we get what we are entitled to as a country.”
The public seems closely divided on the issue, with more voters saying they oppose Mr. Trump’s recent moves.
Fifty-one percent of voters said they oppose the 90-day suspension of travel from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Sudan, according to the poll from Quinnipiac University. Forty-six percent said they support it.
By a 60 percent-to-37 percent margin, voters said they oppose the policy of suspending the U.S. refugee program for 120 days. And by a 70 percent-to-26 percent margin, voters said they oppose Mr. Trump’s indefinitely suspending the immigration of Syrian refugees into the country.
The Quinnipiac survey of 1,155 voters was taken from Feb. 2-6 and has an error margin of 2.9 percentage points.
⦁ Dave Boyer and David Sherfinski contributed to this article.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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