It is significant that there have been demonstrations at airports and in cities across the US against Donald Trump’s decree banning citizens from seven mainly Muslim countries from entering the US for months until “extreme vetting” procedures decide who may be admitted.

US citizens are protesting because they understand Trump’s ban, sprung on the world late last Friday, could be unconstitutional and has violated the rule of law, to which the US claims it is bound.

Furthermore, decent US citizens are enraged by the treatment Muslims from the seven countries have received.

Immigration agents detained, interrogated, handcuffed and deported Muslim arrivals, although federal judges in several states issued orders blocking Trump’s decree.

This amounts to the refusal by Homeland Security and immigration officials to respect the traditional separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial authorities.

According to immigration lawyers, Trump violated the immigration act of 1965, which bans discrimination against people from specific countries.

Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, told the BBC that the ban could become permanent for citizens from countries which are at odds with the US, like Syria and Iran, or destabilised like Sudan, Libya, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia, because the governments of these countries could not provide the kind of favourable documentation Washington trusts and demands.

One week into his term of office, Trump has created a national crisis and a potential international calamity that could very well boost the standing of Daesh and Al Qaeda in Muslim countries, and alienate Muslim residents in non-Muslim countries.

Instead of taking note of the angry response in the US and abroad, the Trump White House declared the ban a “massive success story”.

Although citizens of the seven countries mentioned above were targeted by the ban, the citizen of only one, Somali Abdul Razai Ali Artan, was involved in an attack in the US.

He wounded but did not kill fellow students with a knife at Ohio State University on November 28, last year.

MORE:   http://jordantimes.com/opinion/michael-jansen/delusional-unstable-and-dangerous%E2%80%99