In the abstract, people opposed President Donald Trump’s executive order banning Syrian refugees from entering the United States indefinitely see the order as bigoted and unconstitutional, while supporters embraced it as fulfilling a campaign promise from over 18 months ago.
But for others, it is more personal. Dozens of green card holders as well as the family members of naturalized citizens told their stories on social media and on television, at airport rallies and street marches subsequent to the Jan. 27 order.
For Meghan Sahli-Wells, hearing about Trump’s signing of the executive order, which also temporarily bans travel to the United States from seven primarily Muslim countries, was heart-wrenching.
“For me, it is personal,” said the councilwoman, whose husband’s family has origins in Tunisia. “I think (the ban) is shameful and it will hurt our standing throughout the rest of the world.
“It seems like every time you think something bad has happened, it just gets worse.”
Culver City leaders have decried the concept of hostile actions or inflammatory language toward those of Muslim decent. On Oct. 24, the city council passed a resolution condemning “all hateful speech and violent actions directed at people who are Muslims,” as well as who are perceived to be Muslims or people because of their religious beliefs, their immigration status , sexual orientation, ethnicity or race.
As an immigrant from Sweden, Göran Eriksson disagrees with a ban on religious grounds, a charge that the Trump administration denies is part of their immigration odder. “I think it’s absolutely wrong if you base it only on religion,” said Eriksson, who spoke a an immigrant and not a member of the city council.
Sahli-Wells, who knows people who might be impacted by the immigration ban, noted that one of Trump’s closest advisors is Steve Bannon, who ran the right-wing website Breitbart .com, a lightning rod for anti-Semitic, racist and nativist ideology and that the White House statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day was devoid of any mention of Jews.
She sees this and the immigration order as part of a larger agenda.
“The actions that [Trump] is taking are exceptionally vile,” asserted Sahli-Wells, who also spoke as a Culver City resident. “Any threat to our neighbors, our families, our friends and teachers is a threat to all of us.”
Eriksson said he understood that government officials are charged with maintaining the nation’s security but disagrees with how the order was handled. “The rollout was very bad. They did a terrible job,” he said.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D- Marina del Rey), whose parents emigrated to the U.S from Taiwan when he was six years old, also has a personal connection to immigration. He blasted Trump’s executive action and has emerged as one of the House of Representatives’ leading critics of the new president.
“[The Jan. 27] executive order by President Trump using extreme vetting and banning refugees from many majority Muslim countries is offensive and a monumental waste of federal resources. Having served on active duty, we are taught that to defeat the enemy, we first need to know our enemy,’ said Lieu,” now a colonel in the U.S Air Force Reserves. “Our enemies are terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda, not children, women and senior citizens fleeing those groups.”
Sahli-Wells mentioned a Feb. 7 panel discussion at City Hall that will be hosted by Culver City High School students called “Growing Up Intercultural in Culver City: A Student-Based Conversation on Race and Culture” as an encouraging sign during what she considers very troubled times.
‘I’ll be very interested to hear their discussion,” she said.
Gary Walker contributed to this story