QUEENS CHRONICLE, Thursday, February 2, 2017 Page 14
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Queens plays host to international incident Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’ snarls scores at Kennedy while thousands protest by Christopher Barca Associate Editor
John F. Kennedy International Airport could have easily been mistaken for the film set of a political thriller last Saturday. Inside the facility sat numerous foreign nationals — some of them handcuffed — detained by authorities simply for calling one of seven nations their country of origin. Outside, thousands of angry protesters chanted, sang, hollered and screamed, demanding their immediate release. Guarding the door were dozens of police officers dressed in full riot gear and clutching thick, wooden clubs. No, this wasn’t the gripping final scene of the next great Hollywood film. This was real life, the eighth full day of President Trump’s administration. “It was quite a day,” Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens) said in a Monday interview. “In my 24 years in office, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
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Crisis at Kennedy News began to spread on social media Saturday morning of two Iraqi nationals with valid visas being detained by customs agents at JFK, mere hours after Trump signed an executive order banning citizens of seven Muslim-majority nations — Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Somalia — from entering the United States, even if they had previously approved visas or green cards. As the day continued, more reports of people being detained poured in, all while protesters by the dozens arrived at the airport to demand their release. By nightfall, more than a dozen additional immigrants, many with valid visas or green cards, had been detained at Kennedy. And in response, thousands of protesters flooded the parking lot outside the terminal. The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups responded by filing a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of detainee Hameed Khalid Darweesh with Brooklyn District Judge Ann Donnelly granting an emergency stay a few hours later. Her ruling prevented the immigrants from being put onto planes and sent back to the nation where they are citizens.
However, two detainees were flown back prior to Donnelly’s ruling. Before the ruling, protesters spent hours chanting and yelling their opposition to the detainments and to Trump’s order. Some, including Rachael Salazar, her husband, Dino Bjelolpoljak, and their daughter Margot, drove all the way from New Jersey to participate. Bjelolpoljak, a native of Bosnia and a practicing Muslim, told the Chronicle that Trump’s order was personal, as family members of his were murdered for being Muslim during the ethnic cleansing in that European nation two decades ago. He still suffers from post-traumatic stress because of it. “I don’t even like doing this because it revives a lot of my anxiety and trauma,” Bjelolpoljak said as his daughter sat on his shoulders. As the family chanted, Margot held a sign that read, “Here today because my Muslim father survived genocide.” “It’s disgusting,” Salazar said of Trump’s order. “It’s Muslims who are being persecuted here and it’s so wrong. “That’s why we’re keeping Margot up past her bedtime, up in the cold,” she continued, “because as much as it sucks for our family right now, it sucks so much more for the Syrian refugees being denied admission.” The Hardy family of Brooklyn also braved the cold to protest. Father Sebastian, 49, said one of his young daughter’s best friends is an “incredibly sweet” refugee from Afghanistan. “It’s so horrifying. This morning, we saw the news that people were detained here so we decided to drive over,” Hardy said, adding his mother is a native of Italy who lives in America on a green card. “It’s incredibly personal.” While the protest was heated, it was also peaceful, as no arrests were made, according to police on the ground. There were a few tense moments, however, with the first coming around 7 p.m. After remaining in place for most of the evening, the protesters began marching toward one of the terminal’s doorways, stopping mere feet from the police-guarded entryway. For about 10 minutes, the group chanted, “No hate, no fear, Muslims are welcome here!” at a near deafening volume before moving along down the sidewalk toward another
Police in riot gear guard one of the entrances to Terminal 4 during Saturday’s protest. No one was arrested, according to authorities.
We will love and protect each other: A simple message from the thousands of protesters outside Kennedy Airport last Saturday who opposed President Trump’s executive order that banned citiPHOTOS BY CHRISTOPHER BARCA zens from seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the U.S. faceoff with cops dressed in riot gear and wielding clubs. There was also palpable frustration regarding the AirTrain, which at one point was briefly shut down. That decision was quickly reversed by Gov. Cuomo, who issued a statement ordering train service be restored in order to ensure that people have the “right to peacefully protest.” Similar protests occurred at airports all across the nation, as travelers were either detained or turned away in places like Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Dallas and San Francisco. The executive order Effective at 4:42 p.m. last Friday, the executive order signed by Trump indefinitely barred Syrian refugees from entering the United States, suspended all refugee admissions for 120 days and blocked citizens of the seven Muslim-majority countries, refugees or otherwise, from entering the United States for 90 days. Legal visitors to the United States who are here on visas are also banned from America’s shores. Also included in the original order were green card holders, though the administration later reversed course to remove the ban on their entry to the U.S. Given priority after the 120-day blanket travel ban from the aforementioned countries will be religious minorities such as Christians, meaning approximately 130 million Muslims in those nations will be given lower precedence for entering the United Staes. The Trump administration did not immediately comment on the judge’s ruling or why, despite invoking the Sept. 11 terror attacks multiple times in Trump’s announcing of the order, none of the nations where the hijackers hailed from were included in the ban. Officials later said the countries on the list were those cited as nations of concern in the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015 and its
2016 update. That law significantly limited access to the visa waiver program for residents of those seven countries. In defending the order, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Sunday that “we’re only talking about a universe of 109 people” who were detained at airports. However, the Washington Post called that statement false, noting that the Department of Homeland Security reported 348 people had been detained at airports in the 48 hours after the order was signed. Further media reports estimate the number of people detained or prevented from boarding flights was closer to 1,000. DHS officials revealed Tuesday that 1,134 people were stopped at airports and eventually let in since Friday night. The administration said 1,059 were legal permanent residents while 75 were visa holders. Some of those people detained for up to 36 hours at airports across the country included an wheelchair-bound couple in their late 80s in Chicago, a 5-year-old boy in Virginia, a Syrian mother and her infant in Los Angeles, an acclaimed doctor in New York and a top Harvard scientist in Boston. When it comes to the limbo visa holders from those seven nations have found themselves in, the Washington Post reported that about 90,000 visas were issued to citizens of the seven countries last year alone. According to the CATO Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank, zero Americans have been killed by a foreigner from those seven Muslim-majority countries singled out by Trump from 1975 to 2015. “This is a response to a phantom menace,” institute scholar Alex Nowrasteh wrote last Wednesday. “The annual chance of an American dying in a terrorist attack committed by a refugee is one in 3.6 billion.” Dozens of lawmakers, countless immigrant organizations and numerous other critics have used those facts to say the order is an continued on page 18