Senator: Order unfairly targets victims of violence

CLEVELAND — U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, spoke out against President Donald Trump’s executive order on refugees seeking admittance into the United States.

Trump’s order suspends all refugee admittance for four months, and indefinitely blocks entry of some from the war-torn country of Syria.

“Keeping America safe must be our top priority, and we do that by aggressively, going after terrorism wherever it exists, not by turning our backs on children and families just like ours, whose only goal is to escape violence and persecution,” Brown said in a statement on Saturday. “We must continue to use every tool at our disposal to make sure our screening system is tough and effective, and I have and will continue to support meaningful efforts to ensure our vetting process works to keep terrorists out.”
Brown said the move by Trump is focused on the wrong people.

“But targeting women, children and families who are fleeing the very same terrorists we are fighting against is wrong, will not make America safer, and may actually undermine our long-term security,” Brown said.

Trump said the order was intended “to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America.”

Critics point out that there have been no fatal attacks on American soil from citizens of the countries named in the order — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — in more than 40 years.

Brown’s office noted that Trump issued the order on International Holocaust Remembrance Day and warned that America must not repeat failures of the past, in which Jews fleeing Nazi Germany were denied entry into the United States prior to and during World War II.