Attorney Pete Schulte said attorneys were speaking to immigration officials on Sunday afternoon, Jan. 29. Schulte spoke from the ticketing level of Terminal D, away from the chaos of more than 1,000 protestors on the arrivals level below.
Shannon Bailey arrived at the terminal to protest at about 4 p.m.
“I’m here because I do not support the order from the president,” Bailey said. “It’s against American values and my personal values.”
One DFW Airport police officer put the crowd in the arrivals hall outside immigration at 300, which, he said, was the capacity of that room. But hundreds more held signs and protested up and down the hall that connects that arrival hall with the other halls.
Protesters chanted about the immigration order and about the wall along the southern border.
Each time someone exited immigration, the crowd cheered, but it wasn’t clear if any of those entering the arrival hall were refugees.
This protest, and others taking place at international airports across the country, is in reaction to an executive order issued by President Donald Trump on Holocaust Remembrance Day restricting immigration by Muslims from seven countries. The countries targeted are not countries Trump has businesses and are not countries terrorists who have targeted the U.S. have come from.
The administration released a statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day that did not mention the Jews killed in the Holocaust. The irony of the executive order is that had the U.S. opened its borders to refugees during the Holocaust, hundreds of thousands of lives might have been saved. Instead, the U.S. blocked Jewish immigration leading up to and during World War II.
Under the Trump executive order, Syrians are permanently banned. Those stuck at airports across the U.S. are refugees who have already been cleared to resettle in the U.S. by both the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.