The immigration order, the judge's stay and the aftermath of that - initial thoughts

First, check out the Heritage Foundation's timeline of jihadist attacks on US soil since 9/11/01 and note the uptick in frequency since 2015.

The agents on the ground who deal with border security every day are buoyed by the order:

"Morale amongst our agents and officers has increased exponentially," said a joint statement from the National Border Patrol Council and National ICE Council.

"The men and women of ICE and Border Patrol will work tirelessly to keep criminals, terrorists, and public safety threats out of this country, which remains the number one target in the world – and President Trump's actions now empower us to fulfill this life saving mission, and it will indeed save thousands of lives and billions of dollars," it added.

The statement on behalf of the agents for the immigration, customs and border protection was a powerful endorsement of Trump's action as he his under fire from critics of his actions.

And let's be clear about what the judge's stay does and does not cover. It "only pertains to persons detained who, prior to the Executive Order, had valid visas or refugee applications already approved, or legally entered the U.S. from one of the 7 countries subject to the Executive Order."


I would recommend a RedState piece by Patterico  in which he looks at the argument put forth in a NYT op-ed by the libertarian Cato Institute's David J. Bier and the response to that by Andrew McCarthy at NRO. His conclusion:

Ultimately, McCarthy’s piece, praised by many who support Trump’s order on a policy level, is revealed to be overly deferential to the executive. It applies a legal framework for interpreting legislative texts that rejects textualism and would make lefties smile. It appears to misunderstand the difference between Congress’s authority to change its mind on an immigration matter, and a President’s ability to reject Congress’s judgment in this area. And finally, it misstates the arguments of Bier, the target of his criticism.

It could be that Bier is ultimately wrong and that Trump’s order is legal. But not, I think, for the weak reasons offered by Andrew McCarthy.

But know this: those showing up to protest at JFK airport last night were interested in neither these legal fine points nor the increasing jihadist threat to our nation.

On balance, I like what has occurred over the last 24 hours. It serves notice to the world that we are serious about knowing as much as possible about the sources of the threat, and acting swiftly on that knowledge. It is of a piece with DJT's order to Mattis et al to present him with a plan for destroying - not "degrading,"  - ISIS.

We as a country are starting to realize that we don't have to live with radical Islam.

UPDATE: A must-read piece about all this is "Is Trump's Immigration Order the Worst of Both Worlds?" by John Hinderaker at Power Line.


You owe it to yourself to read the whole thing, but here's the conclusion:

The problem goes much too deep to be addressed by this kind of stopgap measure. What we need is a wholesale revision of our immigration laws, commencing from the principle that immigrants should be admitted only if there is good reason to believe that their presence will be beneficial to existing American citizens. 

As for refugees, there is no humanitarian case for admitting them at all: at enormous cost, we protect a tiny percentage of the refugee population, while subjecting them to an alien culture to which many will never adapt. It makes more humanitarian sense to devote those resources to protecting a far larger number of refugees where they live, or close to where they live, in a familiar culture.

What is involved in getting us there?