Julia Brownley: “Last Saturday, a U.S. Army interpreter, who risked his life serving our country for over a decade in Mosul and Baghdad…”

“Last Saturday, a U.S. Army interpreter, who risked his life serving our country for over a decade in Mosul and Baghdad, was stopped at the airport and detained for 18 hours. His name was Hameed Khalid Darweesh. Why was he detained? Because he came from a country that was singled out by President Trump because of the religion of its people. He did so not to increase safety, but to instill fear. When people are afraid, they tend to let their President and their elected leaders do anything they think will protect them, and they ignore just about everything else. When the American people are afraid, they might ignore a President's promise that he would ``drain the swamp.'' When they are afraid, they might forget that a President has treated Vladimir Putin better than he has treated the heads of state of our allies and trading partners. They might ignore his attacks on women, on minorities, on our environment, on our health care, on our civil rights, on our public education system; and they might even ignore investigations into his vast conflicts of interest. They might be willing to overlook the very principles of our Constitution that, indeed, make us safe. One of these principles is freedom of religion, because our Founding Fathers knew that despots all over the world have used fear of another group's religion to do terrible, terrible things throughout the history of man.…”