A rally held in New York’s Battery Park on Thursday saw families and friends of those lost in the September 11th attacks uniting against a common enemy: President Donald Trump.
Carrying pictures of their deceased loved ones and chanting, “not in our name,” the protesters called for Trump to drop his controversial travel ban and stop associating those lost in the terrorist attacks with his hateful agenda.
The Interfaith Center of New York organized the protest and released a statement saying,
“As family members who lost close relatives in the attack, we will not tolerate President Trump’s use of 9/11 to defend his deplorable anti-American political agenda. […] We stand united with members of the Muslim community in full opposition to President Trump’s unconstitutional Executive Order.”
The ban, aimed at keeping Muslims from entering the United States, restricts travels from seven predominantly Islamic countries. In his order Trump said,
“The visa-issuance process plays a crucial role in detecting individuals with terrorist ties and stopping them from entering the United States. Perhaps in no instance was that more apparent than the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when State Department policy prevented consular officers from properly scrutinizing the visa applications of several of the 19 foreign nationals who went on to murder nearly 3,000 Americans.”
Though the 9/11 attackers were from Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, Trump’s executive order only limits those from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the U.S.
Further highlighting the futility of Trump’s discriminatory ban, Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute combed through lists of those carrying out terrorist attacks on United States soil, finding that:
“Foreigners from those seven nations have killed zero Americans in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil between 1975 and the end of 2015.”
Trump’s executive order was halted in Federal Court, though the administration is expected to issue a revised version of the order in the coming days.
