Marty Walsh says Trump’s new order ‘is the same ban that discriminates against the same people’

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh addresses the crowd during a Stand With Planned Parenthood rally Saturday on Boston Common.

Same old, same old. That’s what Marty Walsh thinks of President Donald Trump’s reworked immigration order.

In a statement Monday, the Boston mayor said Trump’s order — which temporarily bans refugees and citizens of six predominantly Muslim countries from entering the country — is still “wrong.”

“While this administration is packaging this as a new and improved executive order, it is the same ban that discriminates against the same people,” Walsh said. “It was wrong the first time and it’s wrong the second. In Boston, we will always stand by our immigrant community.”

Unlike the original, the new order no longer blocks Iraqi citizens from entering the country and rolls back the indefinite ban on Syrian refugees to the same 120-day ban that applies to all refugees.

The original plan also prioritized refugees of “persecuted” religious minorities in their home countries. However, the new plan includes no such religious-based carveouts. During his campaign, Trump had called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States.

Upon the chaotic implementation of Trump’s original order in late-January, Walsh joined protesters at Boston’s Logan airport to decry the policy.

“This is not who we should be or who we are as a country,” the mayor told The Boston Globe, dismissing the Trump administration’s rationale that the order was necessary to protect against terrorism.

Upon refusing to reinstate Trump’s original order last month, a federal appeals court said the administration had presented “no evidence that any alien from any of the countries named in the order has perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States.”

Within the language of the new order signed Monday, White House officials gave specific rationales for why each of the six remaining countries — Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen — were included, but again provided no evidence of a individual from any of those countries carrying out a terrorist attack in the United States.