Donald Trump defended his plan to ban people from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, saying his goal is to make America safe for people who want to visit the United Nations.
“It’s not to restrict immigration,” Trump told reporters at the UN Security Convention.
“I think it’s to make the United Kingdom safe for the people who are visiting.”
The president was responding to criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union that he was violating the First Amendment by temporarily barring people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Syria from entering and working in the U.S. The ACLU, a conservative legal advocacy group, also said Trump’s actions are in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a 1998 law that authorizes U.N. Security Council sanctions on foreign governments.
Trump had been expected to make a similar statement at the U