President Donald Trump's plans to build a wall along the Mexican border and shut out refugees from America marks "one of the most hateful days in our nation's history," said Steven Goldstein, the executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect in New York City.
The Anne Frank Center was founded by Frank's father in 1959; it is the sister organization to Amsterdam's Anne Frank House. It was created to "fight discrimination in America and advocate for a kinder and fairer world."
Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order to start construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and he is expected to sign an order limiting Muslim and refugee entry into the U.S. at some point this week.
A draft of that executive order, obtained by The Huffington Post, says the U.S. will deny visas to individuals from war-torn Syria and six other Middle Eastern and African countries, suspend all refugee admissions for 120 days while the administration "determines" which countries pose the least risk, cap refugee admissions to 50,000 for 2017, and temporarily suspend issuing visas to people in countries where security screening is considered inaccurate per the administration.
Frank and her family were denied entry into the United States when they tried to escape Nazi persecution.
In his statement, Goldstein says Trump "is driving our nation off a moral cliff" and "using national security as a guise for racism."