Outrage continued early Monday morning at O’Hare International Airport in response to President Donald Trump's executive order that temporarily restricts entry to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries and indefinitely bans Syrian refugees from crossing into the country.
O’Hare was one of several airports across the nation where travelers were detained and protests erupted over the weekend.
Officials told NBC 5 that no one was being questioned or detained at the airport on Monday morning, but attorneys wanting to help detainees were already at the terminal holding signs hours before the first international flight was scheduled to arrive at 6 a.m.
Thousands of protesters turned out at O’Hare on both Saturday and Sunday night. Mayor Rahm Emanuel was one of many elected officials who came out to thank the attorneys who were on hand to help the detainees.
“Chicago has been a place where immigrants have always found the American dream available to their children and it always will be,” Emanuel said. “I am both a son and a grandson of immigrants.”
Emanuel said the executive order will not stop Chicago from being a sanctuary city, and is encouraging residents to host refugees and immigrants for a meal to show unity, or to even call a family to welcome them to Chicago.
President Trump released a statement amid the protests asserting, "To be clear, this is not a Muslim ban, as the media is falsely reporting” because there are 40 other predominately Muslim countries that were not impacted by the ban.
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On Monday morning, Trump followed up on Twitter by saying that "big problems" were created at airports by a Delta Airlines computer outage, "protesters and the tears of Senator Schumer."
The president added that "only 109 out of 325,000 were detained and held for questioning" following his executive order to bar individuals from seven Muslim-majority countries – Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Sudan.
Protests were also held in Washington, New York, Dallas, Miami, Los Angeles, Boston and San Francisco.
On Sunday, attorneys general from 16 states and the District of Columbia issued a statement condemning the order.
“As the chief legal officers for over 130 million Americans and foreign residents of our states, we condemn President Trump's unconstitutional, un-American and unlawful Executive Order and will work together to ensure the federal government obeys the Constitution, respects our history as a nation of immigrants, and does not unlawfully target anyone because of their national origin or faith," they wrote.
"We are confident that the Executive Order will ultimately be struck down by the courts. In the meantime, we are committed to working to ensure that as few people as possible suffer from the chaotic situation that it has created," the statement concluded.
