Senate Democrats say that President Donald Trump’s new travel ban list won’t play a central role in their messaging, a departure from how the party responded to Trump’s travel ban in his first term.
Trump aimed to fulfill a campaign promise by signing an order putting travel restrictions on 19 countries on Wednesday, citing national security and public safety concerns and a “disregard for U.S. immigration laws.” Democrats say Trump is trying to draw eyes away from his policies his party is trying to put in place, like Medicaid cuts, in the reconciliation bill. And they say that’s what they’ll prioritize.
“I think it’s not a coincidence he announced it last night as a means to try to distract us from their efforts to kick 15 million people off of healthcare,” Sen. Chris Murphy told reporters Thursday. “They are about to engineer this most massive wealth transfer from the poor, the middle class, to the rich in the history of the country. That’s the story.”
Other Democrats agreed that this is an effort to remove the spotlight from the reconciliation package Congress is considering.
“I would say, given the timing of his announcement, he’s trying to distract attention,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin told NOTUS, pointing to the people at risk of losing health care access because of the reconciliation package.
Sen. Raphael Warnock told NOTUS that while he’s “concerned” about the ban, his focus when meeting with his constituents will be on the effect that tariffs and potential threats to healthcare access could have on them.
“We saw this in the first administration, and with most horror movies, the sequel is usually worse than the original,” Warnock told NOTUS. “I am concerned about these bans, what it says about where we are as a country. I think it’s consistent with the kind of narrow isolationist bent of this administration, all fueled by huge doses of bigotry and xenophobia. At the same time, I think this is part of an overall strategy to flood the zone.”
The countries included in this iteration of Trump’s travel ban into the United States are Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Trump also added partial restrictions on Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
Several of the countries included on the list have a high rate of visa “overstays,”according to the White House’s executive order. The administration also cited national security risks as reasons for adding some countries to the list. Visa holders and lawful permanent residents will be excluded from the order, and athletes traveling for international competition would also be eligible for exemption.
Early in Trump’s first presidency in 2017, the president issued a travel ban barring travel to the country by citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries. The ban created chaos and confusion as students, faculty, tourists and more were hindered from getting on their flights or detained after arriving.
While the ban was initially challenged in lower courts, the Supreme Court ultimately ruled in a 5-4 decision to approve a revised version of the ban.
“I mean, this is a totally misguided initiative that sort of harkens back to what Trump did in his first administration,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen told NOTUS. “These individuals are thoroughly vetted, so to impose a blanket ban is like this sledgehammer approach when we should be taking a scalpel.”
During Trump’s first term, House and Senate Democrats protested the travel ban outside of the Supreme Court. While Democrats aren’t making this a central piece of their messaging this time around, they are still admonishing the administration’s travel ban list.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen told NOTUS that she was especially worried about how the ban could impact Afghans coming into the country.
“Especially when we have thousands of people who are relatives to people who helped our men and women in the military during the Afghan war, after promising [that we would] allow them to come to safety when they’re threatened by the Taliban, that we would refuse to do that, I think is unconscionable,” Shaheen said.
Trump connected the reasoning for the ban to the attack on Sunday in Boulder, Colorado, in which an Egyptian national is the suspect accused of using a flamethrower and molotov cocktails to burn multiple victims during a peaceful march in support of Israeli hostages, leaving more than 10 people injured. However, when asked why Egypt was excluded from the list, Trump told reporters that the country has “things under control.”
“I think it’s a terrible idea,” Sen. Adam Schiff told NOTUS of the new travel ban list. “We went through this in the first Trump administration. That kind of blanket ban doesn’t make us safe, it just isolates us in the world. To the degree they suggest it was prompted by this horrible attack in Boulder, Egypt isn’t even on their list.”
Sen. Mark Kelly told NOTUS that “we’ve got to be careful” when vetting foreign travelers to enter the United States. However, he said a wholesale ban is not the answer.
“We don’t want members of the Houthis, a terrorist organization, those folks coming to the United States,” he said. “But blanket bans, I just think they’re short sighted.”
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Torrence Banks is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.