Washington — Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly predicted on Tuesday that the Trump administration will prevail in its bid to reinstate an executive order temporarily barring refugees as well as people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States and mused that judges might be considering the matter from an “academic,” rather than a national security, perspective.

“Of course, in their courtrooms, they’re protected by people like me,” he said.

Testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee, Kelly forcefully defended President Donald Trump’s executive order. He said that it is “entirely possible” that dangerous people are now entering the country with the order on hold — as Trump has said via Twitter — and that officials might not know about them until it is too late.

“Not until the boom,” he said when asked if he could provide evidence of a dangerous person coming into the country since the ban was suspended.

But Kelly acknowledged that if he were given a second chance, he might do things differently in rolling out the order. That stands somewhat in contrast to Trump’s recent assertion to Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly that the implementation was “very smooth.”

“In retrospect, I should have — this is all on me, by the way — I should have delayed it just a bit, so that I could talk to members of Congress, particularly the leadership of committees like this, to prepare them for what was coming, although I think most people would agree that this has been a topic of President Trump certainly during his campaign and during the transition process,” Kelly said.

Kelly later said, though, that most of the confusion is attributable to court orders and occurred not among Customs and Border Protection officers, but protesters in airports.

Kelly’s comments come as a federal appeals court panel heard oral arguments on whether Trump’s ban should be reinstated.