On Friday, Donald Trump signed an executive order that bans Muslim refugees from entering the United States, which was quickly met with serious backlash. One day earlier, a woman was detained at Kennedy International Airport in New York where she attempted to take her own life instead of getting deported back to her home country.
Trump ban
Since the start of his presidential campaign, Donald Trump has made it clear that he will take extreme measures to prevent the spread of Islamic terrorism into the United States. Trump was often critical of the Obama administration for allowing refugees into the United States from Muslim nations, while citing the dangerous of Islamic terrorist groups infiltrating into the country.
On Friday, Trump signed the aforementioned executive order, and then less than 24 hours later, multiple detainees were held at the JFK airport in New York. As reported by The New York Daily News on January 28, one detainee nearly lost her life before the executive order even came into law.
The New York Daily News reports that on Thursday, just hours before Donald Trump signed the executive order into law, a woman who was detained and ready to be sent back to Chile was reportedly so distraught that she attempted suicide in terminal eight of Kennedy International Airport. According to reports, the unnamed woman took 30 different sleeping pills, including muscle relaxants around 2 p.m. local time.
The woman was found by two members of the Port Authority, who rushed her to Jamaica Hospital where she is currently listed in stable condition.
REPORT: Lawyers For Detained Travels Now Saying There Are ‘Dozens and Dozens’ of Detainees Inside JFK https://t.co/LQoBlpIL7a pic.twitter.com/wBySibbTlH
— Mediaite (@Mediaite) January 29, 2017
Growing backlash
As the news spread about detainees being held at the airport in New York, a small protest took place, which expanded to a crowd of a few thousand as of Saturday night.
Filmmaker Michael Moore encouraged people on social media to gather at JFK airport, which was being live streamed on the director's Facebook page. According to a report by Mediaite, lawyers for the detained refugees claim there are "dozens and dozens" more being held inside the airport, though an exact number has not yet been confirmed. Donald Trump addressed his executive order while speaking to reporters earlier in the day, and claimed that everything was going "very nicely."
