Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said that his staff was trying to seek additional details about President Trump’s executive order on immigration, but they were told by the State Department that the agency had been ordered not to share information with Congress.
“They’re aren’t a lot of answers as of today. In fact, my staff was told the State Department, as of today, was ordered not to talk to Congress about this issue,” Rubio told reporters Monday evening. “I don’t know the reason. Maybe, perhaps, they’re still kind of working through how this is going to apply, so perhaps they don’t want to give us information that is wrong.”
Rubio was one of several members of the Senate Monday night who expressed frustration with the Trump administration that neither Congress nor federal agencies had been briefed on Trump’s executive orders on immigration, which banned immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries for a period of time as well as halted the Refugee Resettlement program.
Representing a tourist-reliant state, Rubio said his office had several questions it would liked answered, but they still were waiting for details. One reporter in the scrum asked again why that might be the case.
“That is what we were told. You’d have to confirm that separately,” Rubio said. “We reached out to State Department, and we were told the directive was that they were not to share any information today. Again, I suppose its because they aren’t clear what to tell us yet, but that cannot be a permanent position.”
