The Editorial Board

USA TODAY

If Travel Ban 3 were a movie, critics would call it an improvement over the previous two releases but still not very good.

Travel Ban 1, you might recall, grew out of candidate Donald Trump's demagogic call for "a complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”

Premiering soon after Trump took office, the hastily produced original targeted seven Muslim-majority nations, singled out Christian emigrants for special consideration over Muslims, sowed confusion for legal residents returning to the USA, and created havoc at the nation's airports. It quickly ran into trouble in the courts.

DHS:We’re putting security first

Travel Ban 2 was an attempt to clean up Travel Ban 1. Legal residents were now clearly exempt. Preferential treatment for Christians and other non-Muslims was excised. And the list of countries was cut to six. Iraq, perhaps because of its crucial role as a U.S. ally in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, was taken off this list.

Even so, judges struck this version down as well. One chief appellate judge said Travel Ban 2 "speaks with vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus and discrimination."

The best that can be said about Travel Ban 3 is that it has a better chance of passing constitutional muster. Even if it is constitutional, however, it still appears arbitrary.

The latest sequel, rolled out by Trump on Sunday night and scheduled to take effect Oct. 18, places permanent restrictions of varying degrees on travelers from eight countries: Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and Venezuela.

Sudan fell off the list, and three countries — Chad, North Korea and Venezuela — were added. Because neither North Korea nor Venezuela has an Islamic majority, their inclusion could undercut arguments that the order is effectively the Muslim ban Trump promised during his campaign.

Indeed, the Supreme Court was slated to hear oral arguments Oct. 10 on the constitutionality of Travel Ban 2, but the court postponed that hearing on Monday amid concerns that the issues are now moot.

That's not necessarily the case. Adding the two non-Muslim nations was likely a cosmetic change. The Venezuela travel restriction pertains only to certain government workers. For North Korea, the order bans something already banned: immigration. Blocking non-immigrant visitors is new, but that's barely a trickle, just 100 people last year.

The Department of Homeland Security has worked hard, over three months, to vet the information that countries provided about citizens intending to travel to the United States. The result was the list of eight nations said to fail, or refuse, to provide adequate details about their citizens to warrant a visa.

But to what end this exhaustive process? DHS' own internal research shows that "country of citizenship is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of potential terrorist activity." A terrorist can come from virtually any nation. Moreover, no one has been killed in the USA as a result of a terrorist attack by an emigrant from one of those eight countries.

The reality is that homegrown terrorism has proved a far greater threat. And what few attacks have been carried out by the foreign-born — most notably, the terror acts of 9/11 — were by people who came from countries not on the latest travel ban list.

From almost the moment Trump took office, his vow to get tough with Muslim visitors to the United States has created more ill will than anything else. This latest installment holds little promise of making Americans safer. It's time to stop production on the Travel Ban franchise.

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