Trump supporters say his travel ban is needed to protect U.S.

The president's executive order on immigration is necessary for public safety, say supporters of the move, and they've largely tuned out the airport protests and public condemnations of it.

The measure shouldn't be a surprise, one President Trump supporter said Monday, because it was promised on the campaign trail. Several others pointed to unfair treatment of the new president, saying other presidents made similar decisions without the same public outcry.

"The problem is there are so many people being busy being outraged that they're not paying attention to what the ban says," said Aaron Miller, chairman of the Republican Party of Olmsted County.

The measure suspends all refugee resettlement for four months, bans Syrian refugees indefinitely and bans the issuance of visas for any reason to citizens from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, and Yemen. The order also lowers future refugee arrivals from 110,000 to 50,000 per year.

The order sparked widespread confusion when it was issued late Friday. Federal Customs and Border Protection officials attempted to enforce the order even as incoming refugees that had been fully vetted arrived at airports across the nation. It sparked protests in dozens of cities and at airports nationwide. Legal challenges to the measure, which Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson called "unconstitutional" on Monday, have been filed.

Miller said the screening of immigrants and refugees from seven countries "that have no government to speak of" should be seen as common sense.

He added that Trump's moves on immigration are nothing unusual for a new president, saying it's normal for an incoming administration to temporarily suspend things as they sweep out old practices and install new ones.

Shawn Calligan, a Hibbing man who supported Trump and wrote letters to the editor of his newspaper urging his neighbors to do the same, said he didn't think the Obama administration sufficiently vetted refugees.

"I don't know what the process is, but it didn't even ask if they were part of any terror group or anything," he said, citing a report he saw on Fox News.

He said he'd like to see safe zones for the refugees established in Syria, even if it required the U.S. military. "I'd rather have some of our military go over there than to have a whole bunch of [Syrians] come over here," he said.

Bill Dian of Brainerd belongs to a group called Defenders of the Constitution, but he admits it can be tough to draw a crowd. "If we get 10 people together for a meeting, we're lucky," he said.

The group is concerned with the U.S. Constitution and any effort to subvert it. They're worried about sharia law, he said, and Dian said the Qur'an instructs all Muslims to "take over the world."