Trump travel-ban holdup won’t stop immigration crackdown, DHS says

Litigation over President Trump’s executive order on travel and refugees hasn’t prevented the Department of Homeland Security from adopting stricter immigration vetting procedures, authorities said Tuesday. 

The department has been able to move forward with changes to screening and vetting procedures as called for in parts of the executive order that were not enjoined by federal court orders. But authorities declined to say exactly what changes have been made thus far, citing security concerns. 

“We have already made some changes to our vetting standards under Section 5,” said DHS spokesman David Lapan, referring to a portion of the revised travel ban that was not blocked from enforcement. “We are doing things within our authority to tighten up but for security reasons we wouldn’t tell people trying to do us harm what we are doing and not doing.”

Section 5 of the order instructs administration officials to implement a program to “identify individuals who seek to enter the United States on a fraudulent basis, who support terrorism, violent extremism, acts of violence toward any group or class of people within the United States, or who present a risk of causing harm subsequent to their entry.” 

The program is required to include a uniform baseline for screening and vetting procedures, a database of identity documents in order to weed out any duplicate forms used by multiple applicants and additional means to better ensure individuals are who they claim to be and more accurately assess whether individuals may commit or support terrorist activity once in the United States. 

Federal courts have blocked other portions of the executive order that would for 90 days ban citizens from six majority-Muslim countries from entering the U.S. and temporarily ban refugee resettlement.

Mr. Lapan said the new changes apply to those seeking to travel to the U.S. from all countries, not just the six identified in the travel ban. He declined to say whether the new measures included proposals to review the social media accounts of individuals seeking to enter the U.S.  

How far the Trump administration has gotten in implementing other portions of the travel ban was of interest to federal appeals court judges who on Monday heard arguments in one of several cases challenging the legality of the executive order. 

Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall said during the arguments before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that agencies have been able to implement some changes as called for in the executive order, but that they’ve been unable to produce reports and other data as required by the order as a result of the litany of lawsuits filed to challenge the order. 

“My understanding has been there has been substantial progress” at the State Department and at the Homeland Security Department, Mr. Wall said of the uniform vetting procedures. “They haven’t released anything yet but they have done a lot of work on it.”  

Reports required by the order to better inform decision-making about vetting programs have not been completed, in part because the 90-day pause of entry to the U.S. by foreign nationals of six Muslim-majority countries has been blocked by the courts, Mr. Wall said. 

“Part of the reason the 90-day period day exists is to free up resources in those departments so that they can do the review,” Mr. Wall told the 4th Circuit. “Instead all we’ve been doing since Jan. 27 is just litigating this order.”