banning immigrants is un-American. it’s also bad policy.

I attended Saturday’s protest at SFO against Trump’s anti-Muslim exec­u­tiver order, which is where I shot the photo above.

Labeeb Ali worked as an inter­preter for Americans in Iraq. That means he is a tar­get for anti-American groups.

For that rea­son, law­mak­ers in the US made it pos­si­ble for him to move here, pro­vid­ing the visa which allows him to leave the dan­ger of Iraq, a dan­ger mag­ni­fied immensely by his asso­ci­a­tion with Americans. So he has passed months of back­ground checks, acquired that visa, has a cur­rent pass­port (not always easy in his part of the world), and he had a plane ticket on a flight from Qatar to Dallas. Once his visa appli­ca­tion cleared and his plans solid­i­fied, he tied up loose ends in Iraq and sold vir­tu­ally all of his property.

Thanks to the president’s indis­crim­i­nate, irra­tional, and quite pos­si­bly ille­gal exec­u­tive order, Labeeb Ali was not allowed to board his flight.

Because the pres­i­dent couldn’t be both­ered to con­sult with gov­ern­ment agen­cies who know some­thing about these issues or to take the time to develop immi­gra­tion pol­icy that has a chance to achieve his pur­ported goals, his exec­u­tive order blocks any­one — regard­less of cir­cum­stance — from seven Muslim coun­tries from enter­ing the US. And that includes peo­ple like Labeeb Ali.

Never mind that if this man actu­ally were a ter­ror­ist, he has already had ample oppor­tu­nity to com­mit heinous attacks on large groups of Americans. And never mind that he faces a very real threat of vio­lence from ter­ror­ists, trag­i­cally ironic con­sid­er­ing he’s being pre­vented from enter­ing the US because Trump and his sup­port­ers claim ban­ning him is nec­es­sary to pre­vent acts of ter­ror­ism. Trump doesn’t care that this man is about as far from a ter­ror­ist as some­one can be. Because he can’t be both­ered to tell the dif­fer­ence between ter­ror­ists and all Muslims. They all look alike to him.

Trump picked seven Muslim coun­tries where he doesn’t have busi­ness inter­ests, and where we don’t have par­tic­u­larly deep diplo­matic ties that could gum up the sim­ple black-and-white of his plan. He banned immi­gra­tion because his sup­port­ers are scared of “Islamic extrem­ism,” though they aren’t con­cerned with how it might be a threat, nor do they want to be both­ered with real­is­tic solu­tions for pre­vent­ing an attack on our soil. No… Trump just needed to show them that he’s keep­ing the Muslims out, as promised.

But here’s the thing: Our coun­try made promises and com­mit­ments to folks like Labeeb Ali. It’s dis­gust­ing and dis­hon­or­able to leave them hang­ing — per­haps lit­er­ally, it’s sad to say — because they’re in the way of Trump’s steam-roller of exec­u­tive orders.

But it’s going to get worse. The word’s going to get around that America turned its back on com­mit­ments to peo­ple like Labeeb Ali. When Trump decides to send troops to fight ISIS, they’re going to have a hard time find­ing peo­ple will­ing to put their lives on the line to help Americans for a promise that they can reset­tle state­side. And that’s a real­ity that could very well cost American lives.

In the mean­time, it’s a real­ity that is hurt­ing peo­ple who deserve much bet­ter than the closed doors with which we’re greet­ing them.

“They have killed my dream,” Labeeb Ali told The Washington Post. “They took it all away from me, in the last minutes.”

Also pub­lished on Medium.