Families of the victims from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks want to make it clear that President Donald Trump's use of their tragedy to justify his Muslim ban is unacceptable.
"We will not tolerate President Trump’s use of 9/11 to defend his deplorable anti-American political agenda," said a statement written by dozens of family members of men and women who died during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The statement added that it is an "outrage" for refugees who had been previously vetted and approved to "now face grave danger and an uncertain future."
The protesters gathered at a statue in Battery Park, destroyed during the collapse of the World Trade Center, known as "The Sphere," to express their outrage at Trump's executive order banning immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries. One protester, whose son was a Pakistani NYPD cadet who died at the World Trade Center on that day, told WNBC-TV: "I’m here fighting for my rights as an American citizen. This is a fight for the American soul, for the soul of America, and I’m here to defend the Constitution. How can they say they're going to protect me by taking away my rights? We have to speak up, we are speaking up and we will continue to speak up."
In addition to the moral issues entailed in banning travel from countries simply because a majority of their citizens are Muslim, the Muslim ban has also had a range of disastrous unforeseen consequences. These include reinforcing the radical Islamist narrative that there is a war between Islam and the Western world and causing a "brain drain" of scientists, engineers, and other intellectuals out of America.
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