...Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, says these aren’t small changes to immigration policy. “In the macro sense, I am very concerned that we are moving back into a space of profiling based solely on religion and national origin,” he told me. He described the plans outlined in the executive order as “fear-based bad ideas” rather than “smart solutions to solvable problems.”
I asked Warren whether he sees it as problematic that the executive order seems to prioritize Christian refugees from majority-Muslim countries, and his reply was definitive: “By privileging Christians we are cementing the notion that the government action is based purely on religion. It’s hard to dress this all up as a purely country-based ban, when you are separating one religion against another within the same country.” Warren added that it’s “demonstrably false to suggest that we can tell what a terrorist looks like based on his religion.” ...