WASHINGTON — The executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said Wednesday that refusing to accept Muslim refugees is the moral equivalent of slavery.
CAIR held a press conference in anticipation of executive orders from President Donald Trump to limit refugee entry from several Muslim-majority countries, block federal funds from sanctuary cities and start construction of a wall on America’s southern border.
Nihad Awad, CAIR’s national executive director, called the proposed border wall a “multi-billion dollar monument to racism.” Awad went on to say that President Trump’s proposal has nothing to do with national security and is strictly an “Islamophobic” proposal.
A rabbi at the press conference, Joseph Berman, was on the verge of tears and said that the proposal to bar the entry of refugees from several terrorist hotbeds such as Syria and Somalia is an “affront to God.”
The Daily Caller asked Awad if refugees have a right to come to the United States, and CAIR’s communications director Ibrahim Hooper claimed that under international law refugees have “rights beyond what normal immigrants have.” Awad added that the issue isn’t one “of legality,” but of “morality.”
The CAIR executive director then equated refusing refugee entry to former American policies of slavery and women not being able to vote. He said those actions were legal but “wrong.”