Former President Donald Trump is calling on his successor to reinstate the travel ban on certain Muslim majority countries and keep refugee restrictions Trump imposed while in office.
"If Joe Biden wants to keeps our Country safe from Radical Islamic Terrorism, he reinstitute the foreign country Travel Ban and all of the vetting requirements on those seeking admission that go with it, along with the refugee restrictions I successfully put in place," Trump said in a statement released by his office.
"Terrorists operate all over the world and recruit online," he continued. "To keep terrorism and extremism out of our Country, we need to have smart, commonsense rules in place so we don't repeat the many immigration mistakes made by Europe — and the USA prior to 'Trump.'"
On his first day in office, Biden reversed Trump's travel ban as a part of several sweeping executive orders. Democratic critics of the ban said it targeted Muslims. Trump during his campaign had called for a complete and total ban of Muslims in an effort to keep out Islamic extremist terrorists.
In a revision of that policy that would meet legal standing, his administration instead focused on countries that had terror ties, but critics said it was still effectively a "Muslim ban" since most of the countries were "Muslim majority."
The Trump White House countered it was the same terror list used by the Obama administration.
Trump took more heat when he added countries to the list and most were African nations.
Trump also lowered the cap of refugees allowed into the country every year in office, ending with 15,000 for fiscal 2021. President Joe Biden vowed as a candidate to raise that level to 125,000 a year if elected, but only raised the cap recently after pressure from allies, and not to the promised amount.
The White House said on Monday that it had every intention of raising a cap on U.S. refugee admissions and would do so by May 15 if not sooner.
Biden signed an order on Friday limiting U.S. refugee admissions this year to the historically low 15,000 cap.
"This was always meant to be just the beginning," White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. "We ... have every intention to increase the cap and to make an announcement of that by May 15 at the latest."
It is unclear if Trump's statement was prompted simply by Biden's actions or by something else, such as news reports that border officials apprehended two Yemeni men on the FBI's terror watch list earlier this month.Reuters contributed to this report.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.