WASHINGTON, DC – The following is a reaction from Sirine Shebaya, interim legal director for Muslim Advocates, regarding President Trump’s expected declaration of a false national emergency:

“President Trump continues to use the false pretext of national security at every turn to advance his political agenda and to distract us from the many real crises his actions have created.

In the past year alone, the Trump administration has ripped children from the arms of their parents, banned Muslims from coming to the United States, purposely lied about people crossing our border to flee violence, proposed a complete shutdown of the southern border, baselessly claimed that ‘unknown Middle Easterners’ were crossing the border, and admitted that it published a report falsely tying immigrants with terrorism.  

The president’s false, fear-mongering rhetoric continues to fuel hate and violence against immigrants and American Muslims. In service of his anti-immigrant agenda, the president was willing to create an economic crisis and to let his own agencies’ employees—including border security officials—be deprived of their paychecks for weeks. He lost that fight, and is now resorting to manufacturing a false national emergency in order to do an end-run around Congress.

The real national emergency we are facing is the president’s willingness to abuse his power to build an unpopular and ineffective monument to hate and division.”

Muslim Advocates is a national civil rights organization working in the courts, in the halls of power and in communities to halt bigotry in its tracks. We ensure that American Muslims have a seat at the table with expert representation so that all Americans may live free from hate and discrimination.

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