Donald
Trump to order Mexico wall in national security crackdown
US
president due to sign off executive orders, including a temporary ban
on refugees from the Middle East
Matthew Weaver and
agencies
Wednesday 25 January
2017 09.57 GMT
Donald Trump is due
to sign off a volley of executive orders on national security,
including measures to start the construction of a wall on the Mexican
border and the imposition of a ban on refugees from the Middle East.
The new US president
is expected to sign orders setting out federal funding for the wall
during a visit to the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday,
two administration officials told the Associated Press.
He will also impose
a temporary ban on most refugees and suspend visas for citizens of
Syria and six other Middle Eastern and African countries,
congressional aides and immigration experts briefed on the measures
told Reuters.
According to a
report in the New York Times, Trump is also considering measures that
are even more contentious, including reviewing whether to resume the
once-secret “black site” detention programme, designating the
Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation, and keeping open the
Guantánamo Bay detention centre.
Trump appeared to
preview the measures in a characteristic tweet late on Tuesday that
said: “Big day planned on NATIONAL SECURITY tomorrow. Among many
other things, we will build the wall!”
Trump has used
executive orders as a very public show of swiftly undoing the work of
the Obama administration and beginning to honour pledges made on the
campaign trail. On Tuesday, he angered Native Americans and climate
change activists by signing executive orders to allow construction of
the Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines. On Monday, he
reinstated the “global gag rule”, which bans funding for groups
that offer abortions or abortion advocacy, even if they use their own
funds to do so.
His latest orders
are expected to involve restricting access to the US for refugees and
some visa holders from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and
Yemen, said the aides and experts. By doing so, he looks likely to
ignore Bana al-Abed, the seven-year-old girl whose tweets from Aleppo
drew attention to the city’s devastation, who has urged Trump to
“do something for the children of Syria” in an open letter.
James Carafano, who
led the Trump’s homeland security transition team, insisted that
the planned visa restrictions were “prudent”.
Speaking on BBC
Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “We have seen legitimate
cases of transnational terrorism of people travelling from one
country to another to do terrorist acts. We have actually seen a
number of them in western Europe, so a country putting in place
prudent measures to interdict terrorist travel by making sure you are
screening refugees and visa applicants appropriately is not in any
way imprudent. And dealing with that while you’re also dealing with
trying to prevent homegrown terrorist attacks at the same time to me
just sounds like reasonable responsible national security.
“It doesn’t seem
like an effort to persecute any religion or any particular people.”
Carafano conceded
that the wall on the Mexico border would initially have to be paid
for by the US government. “If the federal government buys a tank
the only way it can do that is with federal dollar,” he said.
The restrictions on
refugees are likely to include bans for several months on admissions
from all countries until the state and homeland security departments
can make the vetting process more rigorous. The US already has one of
the most rigorous vetting processes in the world, and it can take up
to two years of interviews and background checks for a person to gain
admittance.
There is also likely
to be an exception for those fleeing religious persecution if their
religion is a minority in their country, a person briefed on the
proposal told Reuters. That exception could cover Christians fleeing
Muslim-majority nations.
Trump initially
proposed a “complete and total” ban on Muslims entering the US,
but has since said he would instead focus on restrictions on
countries whose migrants could pose a threat.
Detractors could
launch legal challenges to the moves if all the countries subject to
the ban are Muslim-majority nations, said Hiroshi Motomura, of the
UCLA School of Law. Legal arguments could claim the executive orders
discriminate against a particular religion, which would be
unconstitutional, he said.
“His comments
during the campaign and a number of people on his team focused very
much on religion as the target,” Motomura said.
To block entry from
the designated countries, Trump is likely to instruct the state
department to stop issuing visas to people from those nations,
according to sources familiar with the visa process. He could also
instruct Customs and Border Protection to stop any current visa
holders from those countries from entering the US. During the
campaign, Trump also floated the idea of a religious registry, a plan
that would be likely to face challenges in the courts.
The White House
spokesman, Sean Spicer, said on Tuesday that the state and homeland
security departments would work on the vetting process once Trump’s
nominee to head the state department, Rex Tillerson, is confirmed.
Other measures may
include directing all agencies to finish work on a biometric
identification system for non-citizens entering and exiting the US
and a crackdown on immigrants fraudulently receiving government
benefits, according to the congressional aides and immigration
experts.
The Associated Press
and Reuters contributed to this report
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