Trump says new refugee policy will prioritize persecuted Christians

President Donald Trump has vowed that persecuted Christians who are seeking asylum in the U.S. will be given a priority under his new refugee policy.

On Friday, the president signed an executive order temporarily blocking refugees from Syria and other predominantly Muslim countries. He also established a religious test for refugees from Muslim nations to give preference to Christians and other minority religions over Muslims.

In an interview with CBN's the Brody File, Trump explained that the Syrian Christians have been "horribly mistreated" and claimed that they were having difficulties in trying to enter the U.S. as refugees.

"Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, at least very tough to get into the United States?" Trump said.

"If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible and the reason that was so unfair, everybody was persecuted in all fairness, but they were chopping off the heads of everybody but more so the Christians. And I thought it was very, very unfair," he continued.

The executive order prohibits asylum seekers from Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya and Yemen from entering the U.S. for 90 days while refugees from Syria are barred indefinitely.

Christian Freedom International president Jim Jacobson commended the order saying, "The Trump administration has given hope to persecuted Christians that their cases will finally be considered."

Rev. Scott Arbeiter, the president of World Relief, stated that there is no evidence to prove that the Obama administration has discriminated against Christian refugees.

According to the Pew Research Center, the U.S. admitted 38,901 Muslim refugees and 37,521 Christian refugees in 2016.

Only one percent of Syrian refugees that were resettled in the U.S. last year were Christian, which makes up five percent of the country's population.

The Obama administration had planned to admit 110,000 refugees in 2017, but Trump is likely to reduce the number to 50,000.

World Relief, which is the humanitarian arm of National Association of Evangelicals, has resettled thousands of Muslim refugees in the U.S. with the help of 1,200 evangelical churches.

Arbeiter said that a petition opposing Trump's order has already garnered 12,000 signatures from evangelical Christians.