The openly progressive pro-Hillary Clinton anti-Donald Trump Huffington Post embarrassed itself in a post meant to attack Trump’s immigration stance, clearly not checking immigration law before claiming inaccurately Trump would not have certain powers if elected president.
The Huffington Post, which is in a particular tizzy over the fact that Trump — if elected President — would temporarily ban Muslims from immigrating to America, claimed that Trump would have no such power to do so—and would need feckless Republicans from Capitol Hill to grant it to him.
The liberal outlet quoted Trump from his Monday national security address laying out how the president has the power to bar entry of a particular class of aliens into the United States.
“The immigration laws of the United States give the president powers to suspend entry into the country of any class of persons,” Trump said during his speech. “I will suspend immigration from areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies until we fully understand how to end these threats.”
Then the Huffington Post spread out a small army of reporters across Capitol Hill to ask GOP lawmakers from the establishment, pro-Islamic migration wing of the party if they would give Trump such power to halt Muslim immigration to America if he is elected president.
Members from Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) to Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and more all said in one form or another—with the Huffington Post’s help, of course—that the president would not have such power.
Schweikert claimed to the Huffington Post that the Constitution gives the president no such power.
“The Constitution is the Constitution — it doesn’t work that way,” Schweikert said. “As a member of Congress, we are going to, whether it be a Republican president or a Democratic president, I think we will vigorously defend the fact that we’re Article I.”
Kinzinger also cited Article I of the Constitution, while several other members did not get into a back and forth on the matter.
The Huffington Post’s ultimate verdict after surveying a few congressmen? In the words of a piece with a triple byline and two additional staff reporters, it is “doubtful Republican leaders would ever give him that authority” to ban Muslim migration if elected president.
But here’s the catch: Trump does not need, if elected president, anyone’s approval to temporarily pause Muslim migration. That includes Congress. The reason? Congress already gave that power to the president of the United States as part of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
The federal law states:
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. Whenever the Attorney General finds that a commercial airline has failed to comply with regulations of the Attorney General relating to requirements of airlines for the detection of fraudulent documents used by passengers traveling to the United States (including the training of personnel in such detection), the Attorney General may suspend the entry of some or all aliens transported to the United States by such airline.
So, in other words, the president—thanks to the U.S. Congress granting him such power in federal law—already has the ability to temporarily ban any class of aliens from entering the United States — for as long as he wants — for whatever reason.
A simple Google search by one of the Huffington Post’s five reporters who worked on this story—or perhaps one of their editors—would have easily proven its entire thesis untrue. But, alas, Huffington Post politics editor Sam Stein—a fervent Clinton supporter—has not responded to a request for comment on how the progressive media outlet could have committed so many resources to such an embarrassing mistake.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, support for Donald Trump’s ban on Muslim migration continues to gain support among the general public. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) just backed the policy in an op-ed on Breitbart News, while new polling shows a clear majority of likely voters in the United States back Trump’s policies.
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