Trump Is Going to Inherit Powers Obama Has That Can Be Used to Surveil and Antagonize Muslims - Civic Leaders Call for Obama to Eliminate Them

With his call for a ban on Muslims from entering the country, a database to track Muslims within the United States and the shutdown of an unspecified number of mosques, President-elect Donald Trump has provoked outrage and fear across the country.

Now that Trump is slated to take the White House in a month and a half, nearly 200 human rights and civil liberties organizations are calling on President Barack Obama to take action against the Muslim registry that is still technically on the books. Established under the administration of George W. Bush, this registry sets a clear precedent for the kind that Trump wants to enact.

It is the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), which was developed in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks and went into effect in 2002 as a supposed “counter-terror” measure.

Under the program, certain men and boys who were “foreign citizens and nationals” of countries deemed a “possible national security threat” to the United States were forced to register with U.S. authorities, including by having their photographs and fingerprints recorded and by undergoing invasive questioning. Of the 25 countries listed for targeting under this program, 24 were majority-Muslim nations and one was North Korea.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an adviser for Donald Trump’s transition team, claims that he “led the team that designed and implemented” the NSEERS program as a staffer in George W. Bush’s justice department.

Thousands of deportations, allegations of discrimination, not one terror conviction

The Department of Homeland Security later took over the program, which forced thousands into deportation proceedings. According to a report released in 2009 by the the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and Penn State, “In September 2003, of the more than 80,000 individuals who complied with call-in  registration,13,799 were referred to investigations and received notices to appear, and 2,870 were detained.”

A joint letter released by nearly 200 organizations in late November notes that, as a result of the program, “Families were torn apart, small businesses in immigrant neighborhoods closed their doors and students discarded their educational aspirations.”

“One person affected by NSEERS was Mr. D, a 19-year-old athlete from Algeria who came to the United States on a student visa to play tennis at Western Michigan University,” the letter states. “As a foreign student, Mr. D was subject to NSEERS as a condition for study in the United States. Due to a car accident, Mr. D complied with NSEERS one day past the deadline. Although medical documents were available to show the circumstances of the one-day delay, the local immigration office charged Mr. D with failure to comply with NSEERS and placed him in removal proceedings. Mr. D’s story is just one of tens of thousands of people affected by NSEERS.”

Chris Rickerd of the ACLU legislative office wrote that NSEERS “mandated ethnic profiling on a scale not seen in the United States since Japanese-American internment during World War II and the ‘Operation Wetback’ deportations to Mexico of 1954.” The United Nations Committee On The Elimination Of Racial Discrimination expressed concern about the NSEERS program in 2009. Notably, the registry did not lead to a single conviction of “terrorism.”

Following public outrage and organizing against the program, the Department of Homeland Security announced in 2011 that it was “effectively ending the NSEERS registration process” by removing “the list of countries whose nationals have been subject to registration.”

Why the registry is still technically on the books

The announcement did not include any expressions of accountability or apology for the harm done, with the Federal Register simply stating in April 2011 that “DHS has determined that recapturing this data manually when a nonimmigrant is seeking admission to the United States is redundant and no longer provides any increase in security. DHS, therefore, has determined that it is no longer necessary to subject nationals from these countries to special registration procedures, and this notice deletes all currently designated countries from NSEERS compliance.”

However, while federal authorities delisted the targeted countries, the Obama administration left the regulatory framework for NSEERS firmly in place. This framework, known as 8 CFR 264.1, means that a future administration could easily reactivate the registry.

This fact was acknowledged in a May 2011 newsletter, in which DHS stated: “Because the Secretary of Homeland Security’s authority under the NSEERS regulations is broader than the manual information flow based on country designation that has now ended, the underlying NSEERS regulation will remain in place in the event a special registration program is again needed.”

Again in 2012, the DHS explained that it has “chosen to retain this regulatory framework to enable prompt action to require registration of a category or categories of aliens, if necessary, through rapid publication of a Federal Register Notice.”

Citing the real danger that such a registry could be revived, human rights groups say it is long past time to do away with the regulatory framework altogether. “As organizations that represent diverse communities and that are committed to civil and immigrant rights, we firmly believe that removal of the NSEERS framework is a necessary imperative,” reads the letter, whose signatories include Desis Rising Up and Moving, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Muslim Justice League.

It can happen here

The danger of a new and expanded NSEERS program is not theoretical. Kobach could be tapped for a top post at the Department of Homeland Security under the Trump administration. A draft of his plan, if he is appointed to lead the agency, was revealed to the press after a high resolution AP photograph of a paper he was carrying was examined. The accidential leak showed that he apparently aims to expand the NSEERS program and enforce interrogations and ideological screenings of immigrants “regarding support for Sharia law.”

Meanwhile, Carl Higbie, a spokesperson for the pro-Trump Great America PAC and prominent figure in the Trump camp, told Megyn Kelly on Fox News in November that the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II is a “precedent” for a potential Muslim registry.

“We’ve done it based on race, we’ve done it based on religion, we’ve done it based on region,” said Higbie. “We’ve done it with Iran back — back a while ago. We did it during World War II with Japanese.”

“You’re not proposing that we go back to the days of internment camps, I hope,” replied Kelly.

“We need to protect America first,” Higbie responded.

In this climate, Muslims, immigrants, refugees and people of color are understandably concerned that they will be targeted and attacked under the Trump administration. The joint letter comes amid ongoing protests and nationwide efforts to mobilize community-level fightback against registries, deportations and other potential attacks.

Abed Ayoub, legal director for the ADC, told AlterNet that the Obama administration “confirmed receipt of our letter” but have said “nothing beyond that.”

“Trump gives urgency to this issue, but the urgency has already been there,” Ayoub continued. “Registries have existed, when you look at NSEERS and the surveillance impacting the community, the lists and data collection, informants in mosques. Even if they are not made public or called registries, there is concern about the level of surveillance targeting Muslim and Arab communities.”

Ayoub noted that, under Trump, the problem could become far worse, stating that “a lot of his proposals are way out there and very problematic and things we have not seen in generations in this country. They are issues we will have to be ready to fight when the time comes.”