President Donald Trump defended the immigration clampdown
that sparked a global backlash over the weekend by blaming the confusion at
airports on protesters and on a computer outage at Delta Air Lines Inc. that
caused flight cancellations.
“Only 109 people out of 325,000 were detained and held for questioning.
Big problems at airports were caused by Delta computer outage” and
“protesters,” Trump said in a series of Twitter messages Monday. Homeland
Security Secretary John Kelly “said that all is going well with very few
problems.”
Trump was defending an executive order issued two days
earlier that sets new barriers to entry for people from seven mostly Islamic
countries. Refugees, visa holders and permanent U.S. residents were all among
those affected, at least initially. But White House aides sought to minimize
the impact of the order Monday after allies from the U.K. to Germany condemned
the move and major international companies said it threatened to strangle the
free flow of workers and commerce.
The computer interruption at Delta didn’t begin until about
7 p.m. New York time on Sunday, more than 48 hours after Trump signed the
executive order. While it grounded about 170 flights, it lasted less than three
hours and didn’t affect international flights.
Trump compared his order to one issued by his predecessor,
Barack Obama, and effectively told fellow Republicans who criticized him to
mind their own business.
