January 28, 2017•Update: January 28, 2017
NEW YORK
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday to limit the flow of refugees into the country, delivering on one of his most controversial campaign promises.
"I’m establishing new vetting measure to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America," Trump said as he signed the action during a visit to the Pentagon for the swearing-in of Defense Secretary James Mattis.
"We don’t want them here. We want to make sure we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas,” Trump said.
"We only want to admit those into our country who will support our country and love — deeply -- our people.”
The order, titled “Protection of the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States,” involves what Trump calls the “extreme vetting” of refugees and reportedly includes a blacklist of terror-prone Middle East countries, whose nationals will be barred from U.S. entry for 30 days.
Before heading to the Pentagon, Trump told a Christian television network he would prioritize Syrian Christians for the refugee program.
“They’ve been horribly treated. Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, at least very tough to get into the United States?,” he said on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible and the reason that was so unfair, everybody was persecuted in all fairness, but they were chopping off the heads of everybody but more so the Christians. And I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them.”
Trump signed another executive action Friday to bolster military spending and, according to the president, "begin the great rebuilding of the armed services of the United States”.
The White House has yet to publish the official text of the orders.
The president campaigned for the Oval Office on a proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S.
He has since modified the pledge on several occasions, but that hasn't spared him a scolding from elected officials and community leaders, who have said they would organize to resist his administration's policies.
