Mike Quigley: “Just hours after the President's misguided, counterproductive, and objectively anti-American Muslim ban was signed, we…”

“Just hours after the President's misguided, counterproductive, and objectively anti-American Muslim ban was signed, we saw the effects. Chaos erupted at airports around the country, including in my own district at Chicago O'Hare. Green card holders were held in legal limbo. Refugees fleeing violence and persecution were sent away before boarding U.S.-bound flights, even after enduring years of thorough screening and vetting. Unfortunately, this is not the first time we have turned away innocent people seeking safety in our country. In 1939, the German ocean liner St. Louis Manifest and its 937 Jewish passengers, almost all Jewish refugees, were turned away from the Port of Miami and sent back to Europe. Of those passengers, 254 were murdered in the Holocaust. We all bear a responsibility to learn from the evils of history so that we will never make the same mistakes again. It is our turn to step up and fight to protect the values of our Nation and ensure that we are on the right side of history. Because who can possibly forget the photo of Alan Kurdi, the 3-year-old Syrian boy who was washed up on a Turkish beach. Or Omran Daqneesh, the 5-year-old Syrian boy covered in blood as he waited for emergency care after being rescued from a building in Aleppo hit by an airstrike. These devastating images have become symbols of the refugee crisis. We cannot let them symbolize our inaction, too.…”