What’s really behind Trump’s new travel ban?

Donald Trump unveiled his revised US travel ban this week just as his immigration order covering six Muslim-majority nations was due to expire. The latest version has some intriguing changes.

The White House ruling issued on Sunday expands the travel restrictions to the citizens of North Korea and Chad. Five countries – Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen – remain on the list. Citizens from Iraq and some Venezuelan officials face restrictions or heightened scrutiny. Sudan has been removed, without explanation.

“Making America Safe is my number one priority. We will not admit those into our country we cannot safely vet,” said Trump in a tweet about the new travel ban.

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But if his concern is security, it’s interesting to note that citizens from Afghanistan, where US troops have been engaged in a bloody war for 15 years, are not restricted when the travel ruling comes into effect on 18 October. Likewise, residents of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia – where 19 of the 9/11 hijackers came from – are not on the US travel list.

If Trump’s travel ban was designed to halt Islamic extremism in the US, it has failed, Peter Bergen, CNN national security analyst, wrote in January.

“Twelve terrorists have conducted deadly jihadist terrorist attacks in the United States since 9/11, killing a total of 94 people,” Bergen said. “None of those twelve – who are all American citizens or legal residents – emigrated from or were born into a family that emigrated from a country that is the subject of the Trump administration’s travel ban.”

So what’s the logic behind Trump’s extended new order? Is the indefinite travel ban an improvement? Is it largely symbolic? Or is there more going on under the surface?

A Muslim ban?

During Trump’s 2015 presidential campaign he called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”.

After his election, Trump’s travel ban restricted US travel for most citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days. The courts intervened almost immediately. The ban was derided as a “Muslim ban” that was potentially discriminatory and based on religious exclusion. Revisions soon followed.

Trump’s latest ban has “changed the conversation”, writes the The Washington Post. The three new inclusions – North Korea, Venezuela and Chad – could go far in addressing the legal attacks based on religious grounds, says The New York Times.

But not everybody is convinced.

“President Trump’s original sin of targeting Muslims cannot be cured by throwing other countries onto his enemies’ list,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement this week.

Information-sharing

Some of the banned countries, for example Libya, are self-explanatory. But what threat do travellers from Chad pose to the US?

The White House’s position is that the central African nation is an “important and valuable counterterrorism partner,” but that “several terrorist groups are active within Chad or in the surrounding region, including elements of Boko Haram, ISIS-West Africa and al-Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb”.

According to the White House: “The government of Chad does not adequately share public-safety and terrorism-related information.” In other words, there’s a communication problem when it comes to terrorists and the problem doesn’t just involve Chad.

As a result, “most citizens of Chad, Libya and Yemen will be blocked from emigrating to or visiting the United States because the countries do not have the technical capability to identify and screen their travelers, and in many cases have terrorist networks in their countries,” says The New York Times, citing government officials.

Diplomatic aggression?

The inclusion of Venezuelan officials on Trump’s new list is not quite so straightforward.

The US President addressed the UN General Assembly in New York in mid-September, saying that “the problem with Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented but that socialism has been faithfully implemented.”

But does that justify a travel ban?

Newsweek says that the Cold War seems to have ingrained in the US “an inherently negative view of socialism”. Trump’s comments, swiftly followed by a very public and specific ban, could be considered a return to the rhetoric of the Cold War, rather than an effective policy.

“For Venezuela, the restrictions apply to government officials — who could have been barred without being mentioned in the order — not all Venezuelan citizens. The latest travel ban still would not have kept out anyone who caused a deadly terror attack in the US since 9/11,” New York Magazine reports.

Banning a non-existent threat

The North Korea travel ban appears to be part of an American push to isolate the regime but experts told The Washington Post that the provisions are “unlikely to accomplish anything concrete at all”.

Travel by North Korean citizens to the US was “already basically frozen”, according to Becca Heller, director of the International Refugee Assistance Project. “Why are you banning something that doesn’t exist?” asked John Delury, an associate professor at Seoul’s Yonsei University.

The BBC, citing US State Department data, says 109 visas were issued to North Korean citizens iast year, but it’s unclear how many actually travelled to the US.

Sudan exonerated

While the White House didn’t officially comment on Sudan’s exemption from the new travel ban, administration sources told The Washington Post that the country has co-operated on national security and information-sharing. Some suggest the move is politically motivated, The Independent reports.

“Sudan getting dropped from the travel ban comes as the UAE has been lobbying hard for them in DC in exchange for mercenary support in Yemen,” tweeted Ryan Grim, Washington bureau chief at The Intercept and former DC bureau chief for HuffPost.

Overall, it appears that Trump’s message – if he has one – has fallen on deaf ears.

As the Washington Post says, “if this is a message, nobody seems certain what message Trump is trying to send – or to whom”.