LC Islamic Center president speaks out against President Trump’s immigration order

Concern over refugee treatment following President Donald Trump’s travel policy has some Muslims across the country, and here in the borderland worried about their future.

Thursday, ABC-7 spoke with the president of the Islamic Center Radwan Jallad about what he’d like to see happen in the community.

Jallad is from Damascus, Syria and moved to the United States in the 1980’s. He’s a U.S. citizen and got his masters at NMSU.

About 300 people rallied at the Islamic Center of Las Cruces Tuesday to stand against President Donald Trump’s travel ban on seven foreign countries. Jallad said he was pleasantly surprised by the large crowd.

He says recently some Muslim members of the community have been harassed. He says one incident happened just a few weeks ago while shopping.

“The woman is being given bad gestures and looks and we’re not reporting these to the police, were taking a data base to make sure we have the logs,” he said. “Our goal is if there is no reason to escalate the problem, we would like to keep it nice and work with law enforcement when it’s needed not every every time.”

Jallad says the Islamic Center also received a “hate letter” recently. But he’s choosing to focus on the positive and de-escalating any tension that may exist.

“Yes I did get that one hate letter, but for some reason there was a very nice letter next to it, so the community is very supportive,” he said.