Some Republicans are still pushing Trump to move forward with more draconian checks even though his travel ban plan is heading for the supreme court

Donald Trump rose to power on a platform that promised a travel ban against Muslims entering the US and a wall along the US-Mexico border. But courts and congressional pushback have intervened, leaving two of the president’s biggest campaign promises unfulfilled.

Seemingly frustrated by his powerlessness to impose the ban and build the wall, Trump on Monday declared that his administration had implemented new “extreme vetting” procedures to screen people coming into the United States.

“In any event we are EXTREME VETTING people coming into the U.S. in order to help keep our country safe,” Trump said on Monday in a series of morning tweets. “The courts are slow and political!”

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) In any event we are EXTREME VETTING people coming into the U.S. in order to help keep our country safe. The courts are slow and political!

Legal experts and watchdog groups, however, suggest that Trump has already taken significant steps toward imposing “extreme vetting”, giving rise to new concerns about discriminatory conduct by government officials, unlawful searches at border checkpoints and other constitutional violations.

“Racial, religious and even ideological discrimination at the US border isn’t new, but it’s expanding exponentially during the Trump administration,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the national security project at the American Civil Liberties Union. “And recent trends suggest that border officials have been emboldened by both policies announced and rhetoric coming from the highest levels of the Trump administration.”



In his original pitch for extreme vetting on the campaign trail, Trump said that an immediate, categorical screening, in the form of a suspension of travel from certain regions deemed “dangerous and volatile”, was a necessary first step “to put these new procedures in place”.

Some Republicans are pushing Trump to press ahead with more draconian checks in spite of the fact that his travel ban plan is now heading for the supreme court.

“The president does certainly have the right to put in place extreme vetting,” Roy Blunt, a Republican member of the committee, told Fox News. “It has been four months since they said they needed four months to put that in place. I think they can do that without a travel ban – and I hope they are.”

As Trump renews his determination to pursue extreme vetting of people coming into the US in response to the London Bridge attack, a Republican member of Congress had an even more incendiary demand:

“The free world … all of Christendom … is at war with Islamic horror,” Louisiana congressman Clay Higgins wrote in a Facebook post that appears to have been removed. “Not a single radicalized Islamic suspect should be granted any measure of quarter. Every conceivable measure should be engaged to hunt them down. Hunt them, identify them, and kill them. Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all.”

It’s plain that the Trump administration is trying to impose a tougher regime. Certain new procedures are explicit and visible. The most concrete step came last week, with changes to the visa application process required for travelers from countries outside of the 38 nations that belong to the US visa waiver program.

Under the new rules, consular officials may now demand that visa applicants produce five years’ worth of social media handles and email addresses, and 15 years’ worth of biographical information, including travel history, employment and past addresses.



Manar Waheed, the legislative and advocacy counsel at the ACLU, called the new questionnaire “extremely problematic” and said it could be used to “profile and discriminate” against visa applicants.

Waheed said the form also raises “serious privacy concerns” for American citizens and US residents who are connected to visa applicants and might find themselves swept up in the collection of information on social media.

Visa applicants would be asked to complete the form if a consular officer determines that they “warrant additional scrutiny in connection with terrorism or other national security-related visa ineligibilities”. The state department estimates that this will apply to 65,000 people, or 0.5% of all US visa applicants.

“This form simply puts into writing questions that consular officials could have and may have asked visa applicants to determine whether they should be admitted to the United States,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell Law School.

At the very least, Yale-Loehr said he expects the new form will be used to delay – and possibly deny – visa applications while Trump’s travel ban languishes in court.

“We’ll have to see over time whether, as applied, it seems that certain groups of people are being denied visas because of this form,” he said.

The plan for “extreme vetting” that Trump laid out as a candidate went beyond visa rules, however, to call for screening potential immigrants for hostile ideologies. The plan also proposed that government agents make judgments about “who we expect to flourish in our country”.



“Only those who we expect to flourish in our country and to embrace a tolerant American society should be issued visas,” Trump said in an August 2016 speech.

No test to measure the potential for arrivals to flourish in the United States has been developed, as far as is known. But certain changes in the way border officials treat arrivals are perceptible, watchdog groups say.

“From device searches to probing of social media, to religious questioning and to even the use of force in response to assertion of rights – we’re getting more and more instances of each of these problems and others,” said Shamsi, who wrote in February about being targeted herself by Customs and Border Patrol officials.

“We are seeing numerous indications that border officials are treating airports and ports of entry as rights-free zones, which they are not.

“There are the overt policies. And then there are also accounts from members of Muslim, Arab, Middle Eastern, South Asian communities suggesting that many CBP officials lack basic cultural and geographic awareness, and often treat people from these communities with derision and undue suspicion.”

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed on Monday that “extreme vetting is taking place”, but she declined to describe how, referring questions to the justice department, which provided no further comment. The Department of State declined comment on the matter.

It is still unclear whether more changes have been made as part of the administration’s effort to develop “extreme vetting” procedures. A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security would not elaborate but said the agency has made changes to its screening procedures that have not yet been made public.

While there seems no reason to doubt the president’s intention to create new categories for exclusion from the United States, he has a record of exaggerating his progress on policy goals.



Extreme vetting: share your stories

Donald Trump has implied that ‘extreme vetting’ is already underway at US borders. If you believe you have experienced this, share your stories with us.