‘Trump team mulling Muslim registry’
> President-elect’s aides also preparing plans for wall: Immigration hardliner
WASHINGTON: An architect of antiimmigration efforts who says he is advising President-elect Donald Trump said the new administration could push ahead rapidly on construction of a USMexico border wall without seeking immediate congressional approval.
Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach ( pix), who helped write tough immigration laws in Arizona and elsewhere, said in an interview that Trump’s policy advisers had also discussed drafting a proposal for his consideration to reinstate a registry for immigrants from Muslim countries.
Kobach, who media reports say is a key member of Trump’s transition team, said he had participated in regular conference calls with about a dozen Trump immigration advisers for the past two to three months.
Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests for confirmation of Kobach’s role.
The president-elect has not committed to following any specific recommendations from advisory groups.
Trump, who scored an upset victory last week over Democrat Hillary Clinton, made building a wall on the US-Mexico border a central issue of his campaign and has pledged to step up immigration enforcement against the country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants.
He has also said he supports “extreme vetting” of Muslims entering the US as a national security measure.
Kobach told Reuters last Friday that the immigration group had discussed drafting executive orders for the president-elect’s review “so that Trump and the Department of Homeland Security hit the ground running”.
To implement Trump’s call for “extreme vetting” of some Muslim immigrants, Kobach said the immigration policy group could recommend the reinstatement of a national registry of immigrants and visitors who enter the US on visas from countries where extremist organisations are active.
Kobach helped design the programme, known as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, while serving in Republican president George W. Bush’s Department of Justice after the 9/11 attacks.
Under the programme, people from countries deemed “higher risk” were required to undergo interrogations and fingerprinting on entering the US.
Some non-citizen male US residents over the age of 16 from countries with active militant threats were required to register in person at government offices and periodically check in.
The programme was abandoned in 2011 after it was deemed redundant by the Department of Homeland Security and criticised by civil rights groups for unfairly targeting immigrants from Muslimmajority nations.
Kobach said the immigration advisers were also looking at how the Homeland Security Department could move rapidly on border wall construction without approval from Congress by reappropriating existing funds in the current budget.
He acknowledged “that future fiscal years will require additional appropriations”. – Reuters