While hundreds of people gathered at airports across the U.S. to protest President Trump's three-month ban on immigrants from a half-dozen Muslim-majority nations, scores of demonstrators held signs and rallied in Milwaukee on Saturday, outside the federal building on East Wisconsin Avenue.
On Friday, Trump signed an executive order banning, for 90-days, refugees from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen - and indefinitely prohibiting immigrants from Syria from entering the U.S. He says the halt is designed to make America safer by giving his administration time to assess the vetting process for refugees from nations that he says pose terrorism concerns. The ban also extends to citizens of those countries who hold U.S. visas or green cards and are currently located outside the U.S.
One organizer of the Milwaukee demonstration, Soroush Aslani - an Iranian native and assistant professor of management at UW-Whitewater, says he wanted to galvanize support for people from the Middle East, from immigrant communities and for refugees. He called the Trump policy discriminatory and hateful.
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Since Trump signed the executive order on Friday, airports in several foreign countries have removed, from flights bound for the U.S., migrant travelers from those seven nations. Iran's leaders are vowing to limit visas to American tourists, in retaliation.
A federal judge late Saturday issued a stay against the hold Trump's order put on immigrants who had already legally arrived in the U.S., but whom airport authorities here were detaining because of the executive order.