Of the 19 terrorists who attacked the U.S. on 9/11, 15 were from Saudi Arabia, two were from the United Arab Emirates, one was from Egypt and one from Lebanon.
President Trump invoked the image in an executive order signed on Friday that makes citizens of seven majority Muslim nations ineligible for a visa to enter the U.S. None of the nations include countries of the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks.
The order directs the Homeland Security secretary to determine what information is needed to issue visas to people from Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Iran. The American Civil Liberties Union called such vetting “a euphemism for discrimination against Muslims.”
Refugees coming here are screened by the National Counterterrorism Center, FBI, Defense and State depts, US Customs, and border protection.
— ACLU (@ACLU) January 27, 2017
The order also bars refugees from entering the country for four months, and suspends admission of refugees from Syria indefinitely. The president said he would prioritize persecuted Christians from the Middle East as refugees.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations said Friday it would sue to challenge the order on behalf of more than 20 people who charge that it violates the First Amendment.
“The courts must do what President Trump will not — ensure that our government refrains from segregating people based on their faith,” Gadeir Abbas, one of the group’s attorneys, said in a statement.
Separately, lawyers for two Iraqi men reportedly en route to the U.S. on Friday evening with valid visas and detained at Kennedy Airport have filed a lawsuit challenging the ban on refugees as unconstitutional. It was unclear how many refugees were detained at airports nationwide.
Presidents have broad powers to control the country’s borders, which the administration seems likely to assert in court. Because absent alternative facts, the president will be unable to point to anything that ties the nations at issue to the September 11 attacks. As a report by New America notes, “every jihadist who conducted a lethal attack inside the United States since 9/11 was a citizen or legal resident.”