Judges with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit carved out "tiny exceptions" in President Donald Trump's initial executive order on travel from seven Middle East countries, so it's likely his revised order follow that plan so that due process concerns can be addressed, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, one of Trump's senior policy advisers, said Wednesday.
"I have not worked directly in writing the revision but I have a general idea what it will look like," Kobach told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" program. "The Ninth Circuit order, if you like reading judicial opinions and getting into the weeds it didn't say the whole ban was illegal. It carved out tiny exceptions."
For example, a person with a green card who goes abroad and wants to return has a due process right, according to the Ninth Circuit, said Kobach, as does a person who is already in the United States illegally.
The third category of people were those who have a legal Visa overseas, said Kobach, and between the three categories, that covers just about 5 percent to 10 percent of the total number of immigrants covered by Trump's order.
"The vast majority are people seeking entry into the United States from dangerous parts of the world or seeking to become a refugee in the United States," said Kobach. "There have been studies done in the last couple of weeks, one from the Center for Immigration Studies, that said that 72 terrorists since 9/11 have come from those seven countries. I put together a list of 18 terrorists who have used our refugee program in the past couple of decades."
The refugee programs have been accused by terrorists, he continued, who know "that if you come in as a refugee you [can] get a green card and go back and forth to Afghanistan and wherever for terrorist training. That's why the blind sheik (Omar Abdel-Rahman, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center) had refugee status. It is important that we do have an executive order."
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on Tuesday that the first immigration order won't be thrown out, even with a second order, and Kobach said that's because the White House may still challenge the Ninth Circuit's order, which "is flawed on a number of grounds."
He does expect the new order will still face challenges from the "open borders left" or the ACLU immigrant rights division, as any time restrictions are tightened "they bring a lawsuit without exception."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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