Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.) falsely claimed on Friday that no individuals from the seven countries on President Trump's temporary travel ban had committed terrorist acts on United States soil.
MSNBC anchor Kate Snow asked Van Hollen to weigh in on the travel ban and clarify his position on whether he thought the United States was safer without the travel ban.
"Oh I think we are safer without the travel ban," Van Hollen said. "First, we know—and the court found this—that no individuals from these seven countries have committed terrorist acts in the United States.
"It was pure demagoguery and fear mongering for the president to suggest that this was somehow going to make us safer," Van Hollen added.
Van Hollen's claim is contradicted by a list released Wednesday by the Trump administration that included 24 examples of refugees and other immigrants from Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Libya arrested on terror-related charges, Fox News reported.
The White House document itself names 10 individuals from Somalia, six from Iraq, one from Yemen, two from Sudan, two from Iran, two from Libya and one from Syria. The cases span the last eight years, and include most recently a case in June in which two Somali refugees were jailed for conspiring to commit murder in Syria on behalf of ISIS.
It also includes a case from March of last year, where a Yemeni native who became a U.S. citizen was sentenced to 22 years in prison for attempting to provide "material support" to ISIS and planning to shoot and kill members of the U.S. military who had returned from Iraq.
The dossier listed a case from January 2016 where an Iraqi-born Palestinian came to the United States as a refugee and allegedly tried to support foreign terrorist groups. The suspect reportedly told his wife, "I want to blow myself up … I am against America."
The Trump administration faced a major setback Thursday when a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied its request to reinstate his travel ban. After the three judges denied the stay request, Trump threatened to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. However, on Friday a White House official said the administration did not plan to appeal the case. Instead, Trump said he may order his staff to write a new executive order that will be better protected from legal challenge.