WASHINGTON
U.S. President Donald Trump's order to restrict immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries is "absolutely" a ban on Muslims entering the U.S., the first Muslim elected to Congress said Monday.
"More seriously it's a religiously based ban which means they can pick on Muslims today but who are they going to pick on tomorrow," Rep. Keith Ellison said on the MSNBC network's Morning Joe program. "The intent here is very clear, it is a Muslim ban."
Trump's immigration ban bars citizens of Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen from U.S. entry for a 90-day period that began when he signed the executive order last Friday. More countries could be added to the list, Trump administration officials have said.
Trump has repeatedly denied that the order amounts to a "Muslim ban", something he promised on the campaign trail before changing focus to an "extreme vetting" program.
But it has already enflamed passions in the U.S., sending scores of Americans to airports across the country where they protested and carried out acts of civil disobedience against the order.
"What he's doing is wrong," said Ellison.
"This is not about American national security. This is about prejudice. This is about singling out people. And we've got to keep the focus on what is really happening here," he added.
Ellison is among the frontrunners to lead the Democratic Party after former chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned in disgrace last year.
Meanwhile, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which bills itself as the largest U.S. Muslim advocacy group, said it was filing a federal lawsuit to challenge the constitutionality of Trump's order "because its apparent purpose and underlying motive is to ban people of the Islamic faith from Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States".
CAIR litigation director Lena Masri said the order was "based on bigotry, not reality”.
The lawsuit will be filed in a Virginia district court.
