Vanity Fair November 16 2016
Snip:
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/donald-trump-kris-kobach-muslim-registry?mbid=social_facebook
When Trump first introduced the idea of a Muslim registry during the Republican primary, he offered scant details as to how such a database might operate in practice. “Different places. You sign up at different places. But it’s all about management. Our country has no management,” Trump explained, vaguely, at the time. When asked how it would differ from the forced registration of Jewish people, Trump’s response similarly came up short. “You tell me,” he repeatedly told reporters. On the campaign trail, this level of dubiousness was routine for Trump: throw out a controversial idea, refuse to be pinned down by policy details, rinse and repeat. But now, as Trump prepares to take over the White House, the president-elect is assembling a team of immigration hardliners and extremists who can—and want to—turn the billionaire’s most terrifying ideas into reality.
Foremost among Trump’s far-right policy advisers is Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach. Derided by his critics as an “anti-immigration zealot” and beloved by “far-right nativists,” Kobach is among the loudest voices in the anti-immigration movement in the U.S. and has played an influential role in enacting the strictest immigration legislation in the country. (One law, SB 1070, authorized Arizona police to demand papers proving citizenship or immigration status from anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally. Parts of the law were subsequently ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.) Kobach, who joined the Trump transition team last week, is already working to reinstate the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, a program created in 2002 in response to the 9/11 attacks during the George W. Bush administration, Reuters reports. Under the program, Muslim males over 16 years old entering the U.S. from roughly two dozen countries classified as “higher risk” for terrorism were forced to register. “It was clearly discriminatory because the nations listed were only Arab and Muslim nations,” Abed Ayoub, the national legal and policy director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, told The Wall Street Journal last year, adding, “They just put in North Korea for good measure.” Amid backlash and criticism that the program was discriminatory and violated civil rights, the registration process ended in 2003. In 2011 President Barack Obama effectively ended the NSEERS by removing all of the countries on the list, but New York magazine reports that the regulation that created the program does still exist, meaning that Trump could resurrect the controversial program.
Even at this early stage, we are likely catching a glimpse of what life will be like under President Trump. With the president-elect already showing signs of waning interest in the job, it is safe to say that advisers like Kobach—who, according to New York, is rumored to be a top contender for attorney general—will play an expanded role in policymaking and have unrivaled influence over the executive branch. And Kobach is already putting his mind to work on proposals to keep the future president happy. Confronted with the possibility that Congress could hamper Trump’s plans for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, Kobach has devised a strategy to circumvent Capitol Hill, employing an executive order to direct funds from the Department of Homeland Security's budget to pay for its construction. Checks and balances, after all, are no match for a good loophole.
