On the first day Congress was in session since President Donald Trump signed a controversial executive order restricting immigration, Connecticut's two U.S. senators were championing legislation to block the actions and working to reunite a Milford family who remains separated because of the order.

Sen. Chris Murphy's bill would withhold funding to enforce Trump's executive order to block travelers from a handful of majority-Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa and seeks to invalidate the proposal under a 1965 law that banned discrimination against immigrants on the basis of national origin.

"Trump's discriminatory executive order does not reflect who we are as Americans, and it puts our service members and the American public at risk," Murphy said in a written statement. "Both Republicans and Democrats criticized Trump for campaign promises of a ban on Muslims. Now that Trump's hateful rhetoric is reality, it's time for all members of Congress to stand up and support our bill."

Murphy's office also said he was also working to get Fadi Kassar, a Milford resident, together with his wife and two daughters after they were blocked from coming to the United States. His wife and the children, 5 and 8, secured refugee status but were stopped from boarding their flight to the U.S. The family has been separated for more than two years.

"Those kids are the exact same ages as my two sons," Murphy said in a written statement. "Thinking about how scared they must have been, and still are, makes me furious. Congress needs to show the world that America is better than this."

Meanwhile, Murphy and Sen. Richard Blumenthal joined other Democratic senators in co-sponsoring two bills introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., — one to rescind the executive order and another to amend federal law to require additional congressional oversight of the president's authority on immigration.

"President Trump's hateful orders are anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, and anti-American," Blumenthal, who also co-sponsored Murphy's bill, said in a written statement. "These orders are constitutionally defective and morally destructive. The only solution is to rip them up – and if President Trump won't, Congress should."

With Republicans controlling the House and the Senate it seems unlikely any of the three bills will succeed, but some Republicans have criticized Trump for what he has done.

Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th District, credited the "courageous Republicans" who have stood up to Trump. He said the way the executive order was rolled out, including confusion over whether it applied to green card holders, was evidence of inexperience in the Trump administration.

"Hopefully the White House is learning some lessons that you shouldn't make national policy on the fly with a bunch of amateurs at the table," said Himes, who railed against the executive order in a five-minute speech on the House floor Monday afternoon.

Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, also spoke out on the House floor against the travel ban. A member of the House Armed Services Committee, Courtney said the ban "slammed the door shut" on Iraqi interpreters assisting the United States in its fight against the Islamic State who were granted visas under a special program.

"If anyone could imagine a more demoralizing way to undercut the anti-ISIL alliance at such a critical time, Friday's order won the prize and we are hearing from military commanders who are over there in Iraq talking about the blowback that's come from our allies that were literally underway in real operations in real time," Courtney said.

The Connecticut delegation joined other Democrats in a protest on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court Monday night.