Just how effective would a travel ban on the countries despised by the Trump Administration be? Nora Ellingsen on Lawfare condenses the Department of Homeland Security‘s findings:
First, the report found that country of citizenship, more generally, is not a reliable indicator of terrorist activity. By DHS’s count, foreign-born terrorism subjects in the United States originated from 26 different countries, and no country accounted for more than 13.5 percent of foreign-born suspects. In other words—and these are my words, not those of DHS—the travel ban will not be effective not, or not only, because Trump chose the wrong countries, but because trying to single out any country or countries for a travel ban is inherently a misfire. It is trying to fight terrorism by singling out a factor that doesn’t, in fact, offer a significant correlation with terrorist attacks—and that makes very little sense.In addition, the assessment challenges the administration’s claim that the affected countries have a history of “exporting terrorism” to the United States. In fact, these countries aren’t actually exporting very many people at all. As CNN reported, the seven countries in question were originally removed from the visa waiver program under the Obama administration, making immigrating to the United States a less accessible option for their citizens. As the DHS assessment lays out, individuals from these countries don’t move to the United States in large numbers; each of the seven countries accounts for a small percentage of the US visas granted in their region (the Middle East, North Africa, or Sub-Saharan Africa). Each country accounts for less than three percent of its region’s total U.S. visas granted, with the exception of Iran, which clocks in at seven percent. Notably, the assessment reviewed only publically available data on how many U.S. visas were actually granted to residents of the affected countries prior to the ban, perhaps highlighting the need to actually utilize State Department databases before drafting the next Executive Order.
Finally, the assessment draws an important distinction between the countries on the list that face a significant terrorism threat that is reasonably contained within their borders and those who struggle with terrorist groups that also target the United States. Of those seven countries, the assessment indicates that most aren’t harboring terrorist groups actively targeting the United States. According to the 2016 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, and the Department of State Country Reports on Terrorism 2015, groups in Iran, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan are regionally focused; only organizations based in Iraq, Syria and Yemen currently pose a threat of attacks in the United States.
Yeah, it does sound like the Trump Administration doesn’t really care about facts. Which really endangers all of us in so many ways, if you think about it.
