All Americans are justifiably concerned about protecting themselves from terrorist acts, but Donald J. Trump’s executive order temporarily banning refugees and individuals from seven predominantly Muslim nations is simply big government gone bad.

Trump’s order, titled “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States” and issued late Friday, purports to cause the creation of immense new bureaucratic processes. The order demands the Secretary of State, Secretary of Homeland Security, director of National Intelligence and director of the FBI to create no fewer than 13 major new reports to the President in coming months on the progress of various aspects of Trump’s vague new policy.

But perhaps most astounding is the machinery the order purports to put in place under what Trump has called “extreme vetting.” Section 4 of the order requires the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the FBI and the director of national intelligence to create a program “to identify individuals seeking to enter the United States on a fraudulent basis with the intent to cause harm, or who are at risk of causing harm subsequent to their admission.”

How exactly does Trump propose to do this? The answer is a series of steps, some of which already are in place and others of which are ambiguous, seemingly unachievable or possibly contrary to law:

“in-person interviews”;

“a database of identity documents proffered by applicants to ensure that duplicate documents are not used by multiple applicants”;

“amended application forms that include questions aimed at identifying fraudulent answers and malicious intent”;

“a mechanism to ensure that the applicant is who the applicant claims to be”;

“a process to evaluate the applicant’s likelihood of becoming a positively contributing member of society and the applicant’s ability to make contributions to the national interest”; and

“a mechanism to assess whether or not the applicant has the intent to commit criminal or terrorist acts after entering the United States.”

These steps, according to the order, should be applied to all immigrants seeking entry to the United States. It is ridiculous to think that Trump is the first president to believe it might be important to carefully screen non-citizens entering the country. That already has been happening. What makes Trump different than other presidents is the arrogant and misplaced belief that any program could accurately predict, under threat of effective banishment, criminal intent.

I am not the first to suggest in recent days that Trump and his cadre of advisors, who seem to thrive on fiction, should watch the 2002 film “Minority Report” and perhaps learn something.

Perhaps the most ill-advised portion of the executive order is the restriction on entry of Syrian refugees to the United States. Drawing on authority supposedly given by 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f), Trump purports to restrict entry of Syrian refugees until he says otherwise and to limit the entry of all refugees to 50,000 during fiscal year 2017.

In a phone call after Trump signed the order, German Chancellor Angela Merkel apparently had to explain to Trump that the United States has signed international treaties protecting refugees. Trump and his lawyers would do well to re-read the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees and its associated 1967 Protocol, to which the United States is a party.

Modern international refugee law traces its roots to World War I and World War II, when specific targeted groups of people were de-nationalized, deported, persecuted, tortured or killed in Russia and Germany, in particular. Primary goals of the 1951 Refugee Convention were to protect fundamental rights such as free expression and free exercise of religion, and to ensure non-discrimination in refugee status determinations.

The 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol define a refugee as someone who has been, or fears she will be, persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. Trump’s order has turned that formulation on its head by specifically banning people who meet certain of those qualifications.

A key concept of international agreements is non-refoulement, the principle that individuals who have been persecuted, or fear persecution, should not be returned to the country of persecution. The United States already has agreed to the international-law standard that asylum seekers should be given time and a place to have their claims adjudicated. The crux of international refugee law is an individual assessment of credible fear of persecution.

Although even non-refoulement has exceptions for national security, public order and criminality, the executive order signed by Trump on Friday gives little indication it will be applied in an individualized way. A blanket prohibition on refugees is clearly out of step with a century of historical lessons for a world leader such as the United States.

The United States can, and must, do better.

Edward L. Carter is an attorney who lives in Provo.