DIALA SHAMAS: We are well on our way to being Trump's America
Donald Trump's proclamations about banning all Muslims from entering the United States -- even if temporarily -- have triggered welcome condemnation, as politicians have scrambled to remind us that such a ban would be contrary to American values. Yet those of us engaged with policies affecting U.S. Muslims between election cycles are dismayed, but not surprised, by Trump's idea. For the past 14 years, authorities have steadily and silently implemented variants of the proposed Muslim exclusion.
A few examples:
1. Delaying and denying Muslim immigrant petitions
There is a little-known, formerly secret, but sweeping federal program that results in delays or outright denial of citizenship or immigration benefits for otherwise eligible Muslims, apparently based on their religion or national origin, among other things. That program, known as the "Controlled Application Review and Resolution Program" or "CARRP," has been in place since at least 2008.
2. "Proxy denaturalization" through passport confiscation
This is an even less well-known program with strikingly Trumpian characteristics. Around 2013, our organization, along with a number of civil liberties organizations, began receiving complaints from more than a dozen U.S. citizens of Yemeni origin, all describing the same peculiar pattern: They went to the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, for a routine consular matter such as registering a newborn. Once there, they were subjected to lengthy and coercive interrogation by State Department officials, at the end of which they were forced to sign statements and had their U.S. passports seized without any explanation. Some were only told after months -- or sometimes a year -- that they would be allowed to fly back to the United States and go through an opaque process to argue that they should get their passports back.
To date, an unknown number of Americans are likely stuck in Yemen.
3. The no-fly list
Another tool disproportionately affecting Muslims is the "no-fly list," a database of individuals who are denied boarding any commercial flights to or from the United States. In 2013, there were reportedly 468,749 names on the watch list. Based on all the publicly known examples that I am aware of, and all of my clients, the no-fly list is almost entirely populated by Muslims or individuals assumed to be Muslim. Federal courts have ruled that the process to challenge one's placement on this list is constitutionally inadequate, and there have been some recent, limited revisions to this process.
4. "Special registration" for Muslims
And let us not forget another very recent historical precedent for Trump's proposal: The National Security Entry-Exit Registration System program, implemented after the 9/11 attacks, mandated that all non-immigrant males from 24 Muslim-majority countries (and North Korea) register with the government. Though the program did not yield a single terrorism-related prosecution, it resulted in widespread deportations and exclusions, and its effects on thousands of families remain to this day.
None of these programs quite amount to the outright ban that Trump has called for. But they are all variants on a theme -- a theme that has been alive and well for some time.
Write Diala Shamas, a supervising attorney at Stanford Law School's International Human Rights Clinic, at diala.shamas@law.cuny.edu
This story was originally published December 19, 2015 at 6:44 PM with the headline "DIALA SHAMAS: We are well on our way to being Trump's America ."