Blog Post

AEIdeas

Donald Trump won a big victory yesterday with the Supreme Court decision lifting the stay on his temporary travel ban. CNN reports:

The Supreme Court Monday allowed parts of President Donald Trump’s travel ban to go into effect and will hear oral arguments on the case this fall…. The ban, which bars people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the US for 90 days — outside of the “bona fide” relationship exception — could take effect in as little as 72 hours. Trump called the decision “a clear victory for our national security.”

Here’s the problem: the ban was supposed to be a temporary 90-day hold on entry for nationals from these countries while the Trump administration came up with new procedures for “extreme vetting” to weed out terrorists.

Well, it’s been 150 days since the original travel ban, and 112 since the revised version were issued.

So where’s the “extreme vetting”?

Answer: nowhere to be found. The New York Times recently reported:

When a federal judge blocked President Trump’s first attempt to impose a travel ban on seven majority-Muslim nations, Mr. Trump warned of “death & destruction” from dangerous people who “may be pouring into our country.” “Courts must act fast!” he implored on Twitter. But in the [months] since, the president’s administration has exhibited little urgency of its own…. [T]he administration has not taken steps it could have — even while the latest ban is tied up in the courts — to achieve the restriction’s stated goal: to tighten the vetting of people trying to get into the United States. The result has been that almost halfway through his first year in office, Mr. Trump has made few changes to the way people enter the United States from the countries he has deemed the most dangerous, despite his frequent campaign promises to institute “extreme vetting.”

Last week, the administration announced that it was finally starting work on new vetting procedures. What was the excuse for the delay? According to USA Today:

The Trump administration said Tuesday it was restarting a long-delayed global review of vetting procedures to screen foreigners trying to enter the United States that may lead to more travel restrictions against citizens of other countries…. [T]he U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco ruled last week that one section of Trump’s order can go into effect. That portion orders federal agencies to review how the U.S. screens foreigners and determines whether foreign governments are handing over enough information about their citizens. Department of Homeland Security spokesman David Lapan said Tuesday that the review will begin immediately. “The ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals finally allows DHS to resume the important work of reviewing the information provided by all countries on their citizens who desire to travel to the United States, to ensure the applicant doesn’t present a security or public safety threat to the U.S.,” Lapan said.

This is patently absurd. There is no reason the Trump administration had to wait for the court to act — or the ban to take effect — to start internal deliberations on new vetting procedures. No court in the land has the authority to stop the executive branch from conducting an internal review of new ways to screen people entering the United States.

Indeed, the Trump administration has implemented some new security procedures, such as asking visa applicants for social media handles they have used in the previous last five years and biographical and travel information for the past 15 years.

So why the delay with an extreme vetting plan? The administration has had 150 days — two months more than the 90-days it said it needed — to begin working on much needed new vetting procedures. And they have nothing to show for it.

All the administration’s energy has gone into fighting for and defending the ban, rather than being poured into plans for tougher screening that could have been in place by now.

The lack of new vetting procedures shows what a mistake the travel ban was. All the administration’s energy has gone into fighting for and defending the ban, rather than being poured into plans for tougher screening that could have been in place by now.

As I have pointed out here and here, the US visa screening process is badly broken. In 2015, the State Department admitted to Congress that it had revoked the visas of 9,500 individuals since 2001 who were believed to have either engaged in terrorist activities or were associated with a terrorist organization. That’s 9,500 people who beat our screening procedures, and got visas to enter the United States, only to later be discovered as having terrorist ties. And last year, news broke that the at least 1,600 immigrants, who were supposed to be deported because they posed a threat to national security, were instead mistakenly granted US citizenship.

So in a sense Trump is right: the delays have been dangerous for the United States. But it’s not the courts that are to blame, it is the Trump administration itself.