On February 10, a group of 29 distinguished experts from TCP’s bipartisan Liberty and Security Committee and Task Force on Detainee Treatment issued a statement in response to a series of recent executive orders by President Donald Trump. The signatories, including former members of Congress, retired generals, former officials from the Departments of State, Defense, and the intelligence services, and other experts, wrote that the orders “threaten to harm fundamental constitutional rights, American values, and innocent people, without any evidence that they will benefit national security.”

The statement goes on to discuss more specific problems with:

• Executive Order 13,769, which bans individuals from seven majority-Muslim nations from entering the United States;
• Executive Order 13,768, which empowers state and federal law enforcement officials to target virtually any undocumented person for deportation, and calls for the publication of weekly lists of “criminal actions committed by aliens”
• Executive Order 13,767, which directs construction of not only a physical wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, but also of detention facilities to hold virtually all individuals facing removal proceedings
• A draft executive order directing that the prison at Guantanamo Bay remain open, and that new captives be sent there.

The full statement and list of signatories is available here.