In 1939, the German oceanliner St Louis and its 937 passengers, almost all Jewish refugees, were turned away from the port of Miami and sent back to Europe. Of those passengers, 254 were murdered in the Holocaust. The US government turned away those refugees, so heartbreakingly close to safety – and also restricted Jewish immigration and instituted new vetting procedures – because of rampant overblown fears that the Nazis might smuggle spies and saboteurs in among the Jewish refugees.
On Friday, which was Holocaust Remembrance Day, the White House put out a statement that failed to mention the 6 million Jews who were exterminated by the Nazis. Hours later, Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending all refugee resettlement for 120 days and indefinitely suspending the resettlement of refugees from Syria. [...]
We have freedom of belief. We do not have religious litmus tests for participation in society. Trump’s order is anathema to those founding principles. It violates the first amendment’s establishment clause, which prohibits the government from preferring or disfavoring any religion. Trump’s anti-Muslim policy also violates the equal protection clause, the part of the 14th amendment that guarantees that everyone is entitled to equal protection under the law.
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