Under the new policy, the privilege of visiting the United States would be suspended for 90 days for citizens from 7 of the most dangerous Muslim nations. Refugee admissions would be suspended for 120 days, and Syrian refugees would be suspended indefinitely.
“We’ve taken in tens of thousands of people,” Trump said. “We know nothing about them. How can you vet somebody when you don’t know anything about them and they have no papers? We have enough problems,” Trump continued. “I am going to be the president of a safe country.”
At the Justice Department, an Obama holdover named Sally Yates had been the Acting Attorney General while Jeff Sessions awaited Senate confirmation as our nation’s 84th Attorney General. As a merely acting official, she was supposed to be a temporary caretaker, not a policy maker.
Three days after Trump’s order was signed, Yates announced that “for as long as I am the Acting Attorney General, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defense of the Executive Order.” By early evening, Sally Yates was no longer the Acting Attorney General.
Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who served under President George W. Bush, pointed out that Yates could have tried to persuade Trump to change the order if she disagreed with it, and she should have then resigned if she didn’t want to enforce it. Instead, the last-minute Obama appointee sent out a blanket order to the Department of Justice not to defend an order by the President, for whom Yates and all Department of Justice attorneys work.
When President Obama issued his executive orders known as DACA and DAPA, which directly violated our immigration laws by granting work permits to illegal aliens, his Justice Department defended them all the way to the Supreme Court. When President Trump issues executive orders upholding our immigration laws passed by Congress, government lawyers refuse to defend them, undermining the rule of law.
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