Trump calls implementation of travel ban a success

World Today

U.S. President Donald Trump’s travel ban from seven majority-Muslim countries sparked protests across the United States and around the world.

But when asked how he measured the rollout of his own travel ban, Trump said “We had a very smooth rollout of the travel ban, but we had a bad court. We had a bad decision. We had a court that’s been overturned again – maybe wrong, but I think it’s 80 percent of the time.”

CGTN’s Jessica Stone reports.

Last week, three appeals court judges unanimously upheld a freeze on Trump’s travel ban, dealing a blow to a major White House initiative.

The president said that new executive order will be unveiled next week and will address the judges’ concerns. During the hearings, they raised questions about how many Muslims would be impacted, whether the order is designed to target Muslims, and whether the U.S. president has the right — under the country’s constitution — to implement such a measure.

Under Trump’s existing executive order, the US government began raids in five major US cities — arresting more than 680 people last week. The Department of Homeland Security said 3 out of 4 were criminal aliens or had been convicted of crimes. But at least one of those arrested was in the U.S. legally under an order from former President Barack Obama.

In 2013, Obama delayed the deportation of some 5 million American young people, born to undocumented workers here in the U.S. The program is known as DACA.

Throughout the U.S. presidential campaign, Trump said he would be tougher than Obama on immigration. But he has still not said what he would do differently with the DACA program. Thursday, he said he would deal with DACA with compassion.

President trump also shared some insight on why he implemented the travel ban so suddenly. He said he discussed giving people a month to comply, but his secretary of homeland security — General John Kelly — told him that would give “bad people” time to come in before implementation.