President Trump said Egypt was not included in his travel ban because it has a close relationship with the U.S.
“Egypt has been a country that we deal with very closely. They have things under control,” he said Thursday, four days after an Egyptian purportedly firebombed protesters in Boulder, Colorado. “The countries that we have don’t have things under control, and why? Now I can say that it can’t come soon enough.”
The president issued a new broad travel ban Wednesday on 12 countries and a partial ban on seven others, saying the U.S. doesn’t have enough confidence in their systems to be able to prevent national security risks from sneaking in.
The ban happened soon after the Egyptian Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, was charged with injuring a dozen people in the Boulder attack on demonstrators who were calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Mr. Trump said, “Frankly, we want to keep bad people out of our country. The Biden administration allowed some horrendous people, and we’re getting them out one by one, and we’re not stopping until we get them out.”
The Trump administration ordered the deportation of Soliman’s family, but a federal judge issued an emergency order Wednesday blocking Homeland Security from deporting it.
Judge Gordon Gallagher, a Biden appointee, issued the order even before the Trump administration made counterarguments.
Judge Gallagher said “urgency” demanded his quick action and he needed to keep the family in the U.S. to preserve the court’s jurisdiction over Solimans.
“Defendants shall not remove [Soliman’s wife] Hayam El Gamal and her five children from the District of Colorado or the United States,” he said.
The order lasts until the district court or an appeals court countermands it, the judge added.
