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Obama Orders Dismantling Of Prototype Muslim Registry Program
By
David Colon
Published Dec 22, 2016
Modified Dec 22, 2016
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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
By
David Colon
Published Dec 22, 2016
Modified Dec 22, 2016
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In light of Trump's recent comments that we "know his plans" and that he's been "100% correct" about terrorism and Islam, there's been increased speculation that Donald Trump will pursue a Muslim immigration ban or registry when he takes office in January. Coincidentally, President Obama announced today that he was ordering the deletion of rules and framework related to a Bush-era Muslim immigration registry.
The Department of Homeland Security will delete the rules governing the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, otherwise known as NEERS, a program that required males from majority-Muslim countries between the ages of 16 and 25 to register with U.S. immigration services between 2002 and 2003.
While Politico points out that the move is largely symbolic, since the use of the system has fallen by the wayside, they also noted that hundreds of civil rights and religious organizations had asked the Obama Administration to trash the program anyway.
Still, the Times points out that Trump transition team member Kris Kobach was a fan of the program, and was photographed with a sheet of paper that had "Bar the Entry of Potential Terrorists" listed as a first-year goal for the Trump administration, leading to speculation that NSEERS would be revived.
“NSEERS was a completely failed counter-terrorism tool and massive profiling program that didn’t yield a single terrorism conviction in nearly a decade. The ACLU applauds the Obama administration for terminating NSEERS for good," Joanne Lin, the ACLU senior legislative counsel said in a statement praising the deletion of the rules.
Mayor de Blasio also praised the move in a statement which read in part: "If NSEERS were reinstated, roughly 28,000 New Yorkers would likely be required to register, with devastating consequences for immigrant families and other members of our community who would face greater fear, uncertainty and exclusion."
New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman supported the move as well, in a statement in which he called the program "idle and ineffective," and argued that "the program was a law enforcement failure that left in place a regulatory framework that could be used to create President-elect Trump's promised unconstitutional Muslim registry."
Beyond mass deportations and civil liberties violations, the actual usefulness of NSEERS was extremely limited, as DCist explains:
More than 80,000 people registered under the program, and it set into motion deportation proceedings for 13,000 of them. For years, civil rights groups have condemned the program as discriminatory. It did not result in any known terrorism convictions.
The dumping of the program also comes as Silicon Valley companies have faced questions about whether they would help incoming President Trump put together a Muslim registry. Recently, Google, Apple, Uber and IBM joined Twitter in publicly stating they wouldn't help with the registry. Almost 3,000 emploiyees at technology companies signed a pledge stating that they wouldn't help their companies with the project, and one senior executive publicly resigned from Oracle after the company's CEO told Trump "we are with him and will help in any way we can."
Tagged
civil liberties
eric schneiderman
nseers
David Colon
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