Immigration Ban Sends Shockwaves Constitutional Crisis

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BarryThomas Goldberg ‏@barrytgoldberg Jan 30

No matter what #SeanSpicer spins this is a pic of a family in handcuffs at an airport. A child in cuffs?

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Trump Has Created a Constitutional Crisis
It took Richard Nixon almost five years to launch a Saturday Night Massacre. Donald Trump launched a Monday Night Massacre in just ten days.
By John Nichols
TODAY 1:39 AM

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, since fired by President Trump, speaks at the Justice Department in Washington. June 28, 2016. (AP Photo/ J. David Ake, File)

Richard Nixon was a miserable excuse for a president who only appears credible by comparison with several of his more miserable successors. But, as bad as Nixon was, it took the former president the better part of five years to get into a fight with the Department of Justice and fire a top lawyer for following the rule of law rather than the dictates of an out-of-control and unconscionable White House.

It took Donald Trump ten days.

On the evening of October 20, 1973, a scandal-plagued Nixon was determined to fire independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was investigating presidential wrongdoing as part of a broader inquiry into issues raised by the Watergate scandal. Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resigned rather than to follow Nixon’s orders. Finally, Robert Bork took over as Acting Attorney General and did the deed. The chaotic developments of that evening came to be known as the “Saturday Night Massacre.”

Trump acted on a weeknight. But he stirred parallel talk of a political massacre. The president’s firing of Acting Attorney General Sally Yates for ordering Justice Department lawyers to stop defending his “Muslim Ban” executive order was instantly described as the “Monday Night Massacre.”

"The way the Trump presidency is beginning it is safe to say it will end in calamity." -- John Dean
Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe was among the first to make the connection, tweeting that Trump’s Justice Department crackdown “reminds me, of course, of Nixon’s Saturday night massacre.” David Gergen, the veteran White House aide who has served in Republican and Democratic administrations, said on CNN “this brings back so many echoes of the Saturday Night Massacre.”

Gergen and others noted distinctions between different presidents and different motivations for targeting the Department of Justice. There point was well taken. But there was no question that Trump’s actions inspired a sense of instability and chaos rarely felt in the United States since the dark days of Nixon’s presidency. Former White House counsel John Dean, the man who stood up to Nixon, tweeted as the events of Monday night evolved that: “The way the Trump presidency is beginning it is safe to say it will end in calamity. It is almost a certainty. Even Republicans know this!”

Dean hailed Yates for standing up to Trump, as did Congressman Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.

“In all my years as a member of Congress, which now is 21, I’ve met so many very principled people who truly believe in the Constitution and doing what is right,” explained Cummings. “There comes a time when people, no matter who may be their boss, they stand upon their principles, so at the end of the day they can look them selves in the mirror and say ‘I synchronized my conduct with my conscience.’ And Yates is such a person.”

Yates acted after a weekend of wrestling with the legal issues raised by Trump’s issuance on Friday of his ill-conceived executive order restricting immigration and travel by refugees from predominantly Muslim countries. Four federal judges had issued orders blocking parts of Trump’s order, but legal battles continued to rage over the matter. Ultimately, the Acting Attorney General (who at her own 2015 confirmation hearing told Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions: “I that believe the Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General has an obligation to follow the law and the Constitution”) ordered Justice Department lawyers to stop defending what is now broadly referred to as a “Muslim ban.”

In a letter sent Monday to Justice Department lawyers, Yates wrote:

My responsibility is to ensure that the position of the Department of Justice is not only legally defensible, but is informed by our best view of what the law is after consideration of all the facts. In addition, I am responsible for ensuring that the positions we take in court remain consistent with this institution’s solemn obligation to always seek justice and stand for what is right. At present, I am not convinced that the defense of the Executive Order is consistent with these responsibilities nor am I convinced that the Executive Order is lawful.

Consequently, for as long as I am the Acting Attorney General, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defense of the Executive Order, unless and until I become convinced that it is appropriate to do so.

Yates had to have expected that she would be dismissed by a president who does not take kindly to official resistance — especially when it upsets his political calculations. But she may have been surprised by the speed with which Trump moved.

The president’s response, barely three hours after the Yates letter became public, was to fire the Acting Attorney General with a stinging statement from the White House. It read:

The acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, has betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States. This order was approved as to form and legality by the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel.

Ms. Yates is an Obama Administration appointee who is weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration.

It is time to get serious about protecting our country. Calling for tougher vetting for individuals travelling from seven dangerous places is not extreme. It is reasonable and necessary to protect our country.

Tonight, President Trump relieved Ms. Yates of her duties and subsequently named Dana Boente, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, to serve as Acting Attorney General until Senator Jeff Sessions is finally confirmed by the Senate, where he is being wrongly held up by Democrat senators for strictly political reasons.

Before the night was done, Boente had rescinded Yates’s move and ordered Justice Department lawyers to “defend the lawful orders of our President.”

Boente’s role will be temporary. Trump has nominated Sessions for Attorney General, and that nomination is advancing in a Republican-controlled Senate.

Sessions, who has faced overwhelming opposition from civil rights groups and civil libertarians, will face new questions — similar to those he once asked Yates — about whether he intends to serve the rule of law or simply do the bidding of a president with whom he has so clearly aligned himself. Foes of the Sessions nomination are still hopeful that a handful of Republican senators might join Democrats in determining that those questions are so consequential that the senator’s nomination cannot go forward. But, so far, there have been few Republican acts of conscience in debates over Trump nominees.

No matter what happens with Sessions, however, the turmoil will continue.

The American Civil Liberties Union describes Donald Trump as “A One-Man Constitutional Crisis.”

There are still pundits and politicians who resist the use of such stark language. It is a troublesome acknowledgement that many are not yet prepared to make.

But Trump’s “Monday Night Massacre” highlights concerns expressed by the ACLU. And the administration’s response to federal court rulings that blocked parts of Trump’s scheme — a combative and confusing declaration that: “Saturday’s ruling does not undercut the President’s executive order… The order remains in place…” — confirmed the legitimacy of those concerns.

There is a strong argument to be made that, when Donald Trump assumed the presidency, we entered a Hashtag #ConstitutionalCrisis moment. And it is unlikely that this moment will pass any more quickly than did the crisis period that extended from Richard Nixon’s lawlessness.

As John Dean argued late on Monday night: “Donald Trump is in the process of trashing the American presidency. He is just getting started. He thinks he is bigger than the office.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/trump ... al-crisis/

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Hill staffers secretly worked on Trump's immigration order
Several House Judiciary Committee aides helped craft the controversial directive without telling Republican leaders.
By RACHAEL BADE, JAKE SHERMAN and JOSH DAWSEY 01/30/17 08:26 PM EST Updated 01/30/17 11:11 PM EST

Since the staffers did not inform Republican leaders about their work, Hill leaders and the House Homeland Security panels were never given the chance to vet the executive order for potential problems. | John Shinkle/POLITICO

Senior staffers on the House Judiciary Committee helped Donald Trump's top aides draft the executive order curbing immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations, but the Republican committee chairman and party leadership were not informed, according to multiple sources involved in the process.

The news of their involvement helps unlock the mystery of whether the White House consulted Capitol Hill about the executive order, one of many questions raised in the days after it was unveiled on Friday. It confirms that the small group of staffers were among the only people on Capitol Hill who knew of the looming controversial policy.

Kathryn Rexrode, the House Judiciary Committee’s communications director, declined to comment about the aides’ work. A Judiciary Committee aide said Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) was not "consulted by the administration on the executive order."

"Like other congressional committees, some staff of the House Judiciary Committee were permitted to offer their policy expertise to the Trump transition team about immigration law," a House Judiciary Committee aide said in a statement. "However, the Trump Administration is responsible for the final policy decisions contained in the executive order and its subsequent roll-out and implementation.”

The work of the committee aides began during the transition period after the election and before Donald Trump was sworn in. The staffers signed nondisclosure agreements, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Trump's transition operation forced its staff to sign these agreements, but it would be unusual to extend that requirement to congressional employees. Rexrode declined to comment on the nondisclosure pacts.

It’s extremely rare for administration officials to circumvent Republican leadership and work directly with congressional committee aides. But the House Judiciary Committee has some of the most experienced staffers when it comes to immigration policy.

GOP leaders received no advance warning or briefings from the White House or Judiciary staff on what the executive order would do or how it would be implemented — briefings they still had not received as of Sunday night. Leaders including Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) only saw the final language when reporters received it Friday night, according to multiple Hill sources.

Rather, Republicans on the Hill spent the entire weekend scrambling to find out what was going on, who was involved and how it was that they were caught so flat-footed.

"Their coordination with the Hill was terrible," said one senior GOP source on the Hill, who seemed flabbergasted that congressional Republicans didn’t receive talking points from the White House on the executive order until late Saturday night, about 24 hours after President Donald Trump signed it. “We didn't see the final language until it was actually out.”

The fumbled roll-out serves as a cautionary tale to Trump officials who decide to go it alone in enacting controversial policies without help from Congress. Indeed, the lack of consultation has set off a wave of resentment on Capitol Hill. GOP insiders believe that the White House and Goodlatte staffers could have avoided the drama that unfolded over the weekend had they looped in relevant lawmakers on the front end.

The episode also has instilled a wariness among GOP aides about the White House.

“These executive orders were very rushed and drafted by a very tight-knit group of individuals who did not run it by the people who have to execute the policy. And because that’s the case, they probably didn’t think of or care about how this would be executed in the real world,” said another congressional source familiar with the situation. “No one was given a heads-up and no one had a chance to weigh in on it.”

Insiders told POLITICO that the botched roll-out of the immigration executive order was coordinated for the most part by White House policy director Stephen Miller, a former Sessions staffer, and Trump senior strategist Stephen Bannon.

It was intentionally kept quiet. Even key administration officials had not seen it until "just before it was going out," according to one White House source.

A Judiciary Committee aide said Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) was not "consulted by the administration on the executive order."
A Judiciary Committee aide said Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) was not "consulted by the administration on the executive order." | AP Photo
Since the staffers did not inform Republican leaders about their work, Hill leaders and the House Homeland Security panels were never given the chance to vet the order for potential problems — such as the issue with green card holders that caused authorized U.S. immigrants to be threatened with deportation at airports.

Even supporters of the administration believe the administration erred in its lack of communication. Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally, speculated that the administration could have given "people a heads up a week or so out and get them on the same page.” But he cautioned that the administration is “understaffed and Trump is impatient,” and the White House has a natural learning curve.

“They could have waited a couple days, and they would have done better,” Gingirich said. "I think some of this stuff is they're learning how to roller skate. They can't understand in advance, they have to do it for the first time.”

When the order first came down Friday, and reports of problems started to surface, lawmakers frantically called leadership offices and committees staff to ask how to respond. That’s when GOP leadership staffers moved to do damage control — even as the administration ignored their requests for briefings and more information. Frustrated by the administration’s lack of communication to reporters on what the executive order did and didn’t do, they tried to pick up the slack by emphasizing that the ban was not a prohibition on Muslims.

“We were trying to clean up their damage," a senior Republican source said. "The thing was getting totally mischaracterized. The way it was implemented was screwing over a lot of people."

The White House has now dispatched aides to speak with Capitol Hill staffers before they make policy moves, a person familiar with the matter said. Boris Epshteyn, a senior aide, attended such a meeting Monday.

Homeland Security Director John Kelly is expected to visit Capitol Hill on Tuesday and has told others he was "kept totally out of the loop," one person familiar with his comments said.

Hill Republicans on Monday were privately simmering that administration officials didn’t seek out their expertise. Most Trump officials lack policy chops and Washington know-how, they argued, and Republicans said they could have been helpful.

One senior GOP aide said that they generally understood Trump's goals to limit immigration, “but we're getting tired of all the chaos.”

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First on CNN: Bipartisan group of federal prosecutors backs Yates
By Laura Jarrett, Pamela Brown and Theodore Schleifer, CNN
Updated 6:37 PM ET, Tue January 31, 2017
Trump fires acting AG over travel ban

The bipartisan group dates back to the 1970's
The statement was signed by more than 70 former officials
Washington (CNN)A bipartisan group of more than 70 former federal prosecutors -- including 50 who served in Republican administrations -- issued a harshly worded statement Tuesday in support of former acting Attorney General Sally Yates.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/31/politics/ ... rs-letter/

STATEMENT OF FORMER ASSISTANT UNITED STATES ATTORNEYS IN OPPOSITION TO ENFORCEMENT OF THE EXECUTIVE ORDER TITLED “PROTECTING THE NATION FROM FOREIGN TERRORIST ENTRY INTO THE UNITED STATES”
We are former Assistant United States Attorneys, many of whom held supervisory positions in various United States Attorneys' Offices. Collectively, our Department of Justice tenure spans more than 40 years, from the 1970s to the recent past. Representing the United States of America was a privilege and an honor. In that job our highest duty as government lawyers was not to win, but to seek justice. It was to make our case based on the law and the evidence, fairly, without favor or prejudice. It was to speak with candor to the courts that questioned the positions we took. And always, it was to follow the law and the fundamental tenets upon which our nation was founded, embodied in our Constitution.
Now the Justice Department is called upon to defend an Executive Order signed by President Trump on January 27, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.” Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, a career government lawyer, declined to enforce it because she was not convinced that it was lawful—and for that was summarily fired yesterday by the President. Struck by one stunning headline after another, we stopped to think: if we were called upon to defend the Executive Order, could we do it within the guidelines we learned and lived by as lawyers for the United States? We could not.
We could not candidly tell a court, consistent with these principles, that the Executive Order is not, in fact, a thinly veiled attempt to exclude Muslims from certain countries based on their religion. We could not candidly tell a court that the United States has the right to turn away refugees fleeing grave danger, even though they have already been fully vetted and approved for admission. We could not candidly tell a court, consistent with these principles, that the United States has the right to bar admission to people who are otherwise lawfully permitted to enter the
United States, based solely on the fact that others of their religion are perceived to be potential security threats. We could not candidly tell a court that the United States has the right to detain or forcibly return people who have lawfully traveled here, based solely on their religion and country of origin. If asked whether the language of the Executive Order would permit the President to give preference to Christians over Muslims for admission to the United States, a position the President has publicly expressed, we would have to say, yes, the language would allow that. If asked whether such a religious preference comports with our Constitution, we would have to say we do not believe so.
In short, the Executive Order is inimical to the values of the Justice Department and the United States, most significantly, that individuals may not be treated more harshly under the law solely on account of their religion. In our view that is exactly what the Executive Order does, and is intended to do. It would be our job, if we were representing the United States today, to say, no, this Executive Order is wrong and should not be defended. Acting Attorney General Yates was right to refuse to do so. If her successor wishes to follow in the finest traditions of the Justice Department, he will reverse course and do the same.

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State Dept. Dissent Cable on Trump’s Ban Draws 1,000 Signatures
By JEFFREY GETTLEMANJAN. 31, 2017

The State Department in Washington. A dissent cable spread through dozens of American embassies around the world. Credit Win Mcnamee/Getty Images
NAIROBI, Kenya — It started out in Washington.

Then it went to Jakarta. Then across Africa.

One version even showed up on Facebook.

Within hours, a State Department dissent cable, asserting that President Trump’s executive order to temporarily bar citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries would not make the nation safer, traveled like a chain letter — or a viral video.

The cable wended its way through dozens of American embassies around the world, quickly emerging as one of the broadest protests by American officials against their president’s policies. And it is not over yet.

By 4 p.m. on Tuesday, the letter had attracted around 1,000 signatures, State Department officials said, far more than any dissent cable in recent years. It was being delivered to management, and department officials said more diplomats wanted to add their names to it.

Continue reading the main story
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The State Department has 7,600 Foreign Service officers and 11,000 civil servants.

The letter had been evolving since this weekend, when the first draft emerged. It was edited as it moved along, with some diplomats adding words and others striking out passages.

For example, one diplomat suggested this sentence should simply end on “lasting shame”: “The decision to restrict the freedom of Japanese-Americans in the United States and foreign nationals who wanted to travel to or settle in the United States during the 1940s has been a source of lasting shame for many in our country.”

Some officials who were trying to sign the document on Tuesday said it was not clear who was in charge or who was collecting signatures. The letter was passed through official State Department email accounts and on government time — several diplomats said union rules allowed them to work on dissent memos on the clock.

“Policy dissent is in our culture,” said one diplomat in Africa, who did not want to speak publicly before the letter was released. “We even have awards for it.”

The letter, which harshly took apart the executive order, said the visa ban would “alienate allies” and “hurt America economically.” Foreign travelers inject nearly $250 billion into the American economy, the letter said, supporting more than one million jobs.

Some diplomats said they joined the dissent by sending an email saying “I’m in” or “Please add my name as a signer” along with their full name, title, position and post.

The letter was apparently circulated through informal networks of diplomats and not through any State Department-wide email list. One diplomat on vacation in the United States said he received the letter from a colleague in another part of the world who was not connected to the drafters and was simply passing it along.

The diplomat predicted that hundreds of other diplomats would be eager to sign it if they could, but because of the complications of figuring out where the dissent memo originally came from, he was not sure how many would actually sign it.

Most people in the State Department have never seen anything like this, the diplomat said. He said dissent memos were reserved for major policy issues, not for little grumbles like bad food in the embassy cafeteria.

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That diplomat also requested anonymity, saying that Foreign Service officers were not supposed to criticize American policy publicly and that he did not want to open himself up to accusations that he had violated the rules. That could threaten his job, he said, especially in such a polarized environment.

This is exactly what the dissent channel, as it is called, was intended for.

Starting in 1971 during the Vietnam War, the channel encourages department officials to voice their criticisms internally through a process of sending a memo or a cable to the secretary of state expressing their concerns and suggesting solutions. The final part of the visa ban memo lays out detailed alternatives, including increased vetting for specific nationalities.

State Department rules are supposed to protect dissenters from being retaliated against, and last year several dozen diplomats signed a dissent memo criticizing American policy on Syria.

But however officially tolerated, several veteran diplomats said dissent was still risky. When it comes to ambassadorships, the selection process is highly competitive — and highly subjective — and the diplomats said it would be impossible to prove why someone had been blocked from a coveted post. Previous dissent could easily be used against the person.

Some State Department officials said on Tuesday that they would not sign the letter because of those risks. While one said he disagreed with the visa ban, he considered it his job to enforce American government policies whether or not he agreed with them.

Other diplomats said the letter did not mean that dissenters would disobey the visa ban. The intent was to try to change the policy so the ban would be lifted, they said.

The diplomat who said he would not use a dissent memo to complain about cafeteria food said that he had been torn when the United States invaded Iraq because he was strongly against the war, but that he did not know how to express his concern.

He said he was just starting out at the time.

The visa ban, he said, “was such obviously bad policy” that he was trying to find a way to sign the dissent letter.

He also said that many diplomats were using the letter as a vehicle to express broader concerns about the way the Trump administration has appeared to sideline the State Department.

The diplomat spoke in defense of refugees, saying that the tiny percentage from, say, Somalia who had been approved for resettlement in the United States had been scrutinized by several agencies and were among the most vulnerable of very vulnerable people. Now, many are stuck in limbo in transit centers.

The diplomat also criticized Mr. Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, who said on Monday that State Department officials who did not agree with Mr. Trump’s agenda “should either get with the program or they can go.”

He called that “bullying at the highest levels.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/worl ... order.html

NEW MEMO FROM STATE DEPARTMENT DISSENT CHANNEL DESCRIBES ANGUISH OF SPURNED REFUGEES
Sam Biddle
January 31 2017, 12:31 p.m.
After an executive order signed by President Trump last week banning immigrants from majority Muslim countries, the American diplomatic apparatus has been thrown into disarray and thousands of would-be migrants and visitors to the United States have been left in the dark. A State Department memo written by a foreign service officer from the U.S. Consulate General in Dubai, obtained by The Intercept, describes a system “inundated” by the angry and spurned, particularly given that the Dubai office handles travel documents for Iraqi and Iranian citizens in the United Arab Emirates. The memo was distributed via the State Department’s internal “Dissent Channel,” a Vietnam-era conduit for diplomatic staff to safely offer criticism and objections to U.S. policy and strategy, according to a source with access to the channel who asked not be identified.

The memo, dated January 30 (“Subject: Visa Applicants at Consulate General Dubai Seek Clarification on Executive Order”), describes the executive order’s impact on green card holders, visa seekers, the young, the old, and the sick: “By the time the ban is lifted, my son is going to be dead from cancer,” said an Iranian couple that had been hoping to visit their ailing child in the United States. “Tell President Trump that my government is the terrorist,” pleaded another Iranian applicant, “but we the people are not terrorists.”

The entire memo, designated Sensitive But Unclassified (or SBU) is reproduced in full below:

Subject: Visa Applicants at Consulate General Dubai Seek Clarification on Executive Order

SUMMARY

1. (SBU) Begin summary. For the second consecutive day, pursuant to official guidance from Consular Affairs on the President’s January 27 Executive Order (EO) on Protecting the Nation from Terrorist Attacks by Foreign Nationals, Consulate General (CG) Dubai canceled over 180 visa interviews on January 30. Consular officers once again staffed the security checkpoint at the Consular Services Entrance and personally provided letters explaining the appointment cancellations to over 50 Iranian nonimmigrant visa (NIV) applicants; consular staff also informed several Legal Permanent Residents and immigrant visa beneficiaries who had not yet entered the United States about the EO. Consular officers witnessed significant frustration and confusion, especially among the mostly Iranian NIV applicant pool, as they relayed and explained the new policy. End summary.

GREEN CARD HOLDERS AND IMMIGRANT VISA HOLDERS

2. (SBU) Several green card and immigrant visa holders sought clarification on their ability to travel to the United States. An Iraqi man, who previously obtained a Special Immigrant Visa for his work as an interpreter with the U.S. Army in Iraq, provided a letter of recommendation from the U.S. military and said, “I just don’t know what to do.” Another young Iraqi man with an approved immigrant visa, accompanied by his Legal Permanent Resident (LPR) mother, inquired as to whether he or she could travel to the United States. An Iranian green card holder expressed concern that the 90 day suspension would affect her LPR status.

FINANCIAL AND EMOTIONAL IMPACT ON IRANIAN NONIMMIGRANT VISA APPLICANTS

3. (SBU) Over half of the Iranian NIV applicants appeared for their canceled January 30 appointments, despite Consulate General Dubai’s GSS contractor having informed them on January 29 of their appointment cancellation. [Note: While NIV appointments for January 30 included applicants from the other six countries affected by the EO, none appeared at the consulate for their interview. CG Dubai’s GSS Contractor notified all applicants affected by the EO of the interview cancellations via email and text message. End Note] Many applicants lamented the financial burdens incurred in traveling from Iran to Dubai for an interview that had been canceled. One couple said that they had waited for over six months for their appointment date; they expressed concern about the difficulty of rescheduling if the ban is lifted.

4. (SBU) Several applicants were elderly parents trying to visit their children in the United States. One Iranian woman stated, “I haven’t seen my daughter in two years. I was going to meet my new grandchild. I pray this all gets situated. We were hoping we could have been interviewed and have our cases put on hold. Then we would have felt that we had made some sort of progress.” Another Iranian applicant accompanied by his wife and daughter complained about “the arbitrariness” of the EO. He stated, “Tell President Trump that my government is the terrorist, but we the people are not terrorists.”

5. (SBU) Applicants became extremely emotional while interacting with consular officers, believing that the recent reports of a judicial stay on the EO applied to them. An Iranian man with a pregnant American citizen wife in the United States pleaded, “Please, can I just go see the birth of my child? Is there any exception? I will have to have my wife come to Iran for the birth. I want to be there to see my child.” Another Iranian couple said that they were traveling to care for their dying son in the United States, stating, “By the time the ban is lifted, my son is going to be dead from cancer.”

6. (SBU) A thirteen-year old Iranian boy also came to the Consulate to inquire about the validity of his previously issued U.S. NIV. He said that his parents had paid $6,000 for an upcoming school trip to NASA. He asked, “I heard about the Presidential order. Can I not go because I am Iranian?”

COMMENT

7. (SBU) CG Dubai is still inundated with Iranian NIV applicants, green card holders, and immigrant visa holders affected by the EO who are seeking clarification and explanations. Post believes that communication challenges reaching individuals inside Iran mean that applicants are not receiving appointment cancellation notifications from Post’s GSS contractor and continue to travel to Dubai to attend their visa appointments. CG Dubai will continue to deploy consular officers to directly engage with those who have questions or complaints about interview cancellations or bars on U.S. travel. CG Dubai seeks updated talking points on how the EO impacts legal permanent residents seeking to return to the United States and dual nationals of countries of concern.

After a dissent channel memo condemning the executive order was reported by the Washington Post, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said diplomatic staff with objections “should either get with the program or they can go.”
https://theintercept.com/2017/01/31/new ... om-cancer/