The US President-elect Donald Trump’s rumoured frontrunner to lead the Department of Homeland Security just leaked what appears to be his homeland security plan, The Vanity Fair reported.
Given that Donald Trump spent 17 months on the campaign trail haranguing Hillary Clinton for her lax approach to safeguarding national security secrets and touting his own ability to keep America’s enemies (and American voters) guessing about what he would do as president, there is a certain irony in the fact that his own adviser acted so carelessly.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach was among the stampede of potential cabinet picks to flock to Bedminster, New Jersey over the weekend to meet with Trump as he prepares for his transition to the White House. Kobach, a vocal immigration hardliner and top adviser to Trump, was photographed with the New York businessman on Sunday while holding what appears to be a detailed immigration plan, from which a number of key points can be made out in a zoomed-in version of the photo, the Hill reports.
Many of the proposals that appear to be outlined at the top of the document align with both Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail and Kobach’s statements since joining the president-elect’s transition team last week. The first item, “Bar the Entry of Potential Terrorists,” calls for the reinstatement of National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), a controversial post-9/11 program that required men over 16 years entering the United States from roughly two dozen countries deemed at “high risk” for terrorism to be registered. (All but one country, North Korea, were majority Muslim nations, and the program was effectively discontinued under President Obama.) It also calls for “extreme vetting“ of “high-risk aliens,” including their support for Sharia law, and says the intake of Syrian refugees should be slashed to “zero.” While the remainder of the document is obscured by Kobach’s arm, there appear to be additional references to the wall Trump has promised to build along the U.S.-Mexico border, the Patriot Act, and the National Voter Registration Act. The sub-heading for the second item on Kobach’s “Strategic Plan for First 365 Days” reads: “Deport Record Number of Criminal Aliens in the First Year.”
Labeled an “anti-immigration zealot” by critics, Kobach and his appointment to Trump’s transition team immediately sparked concerns that Trump’s most controversial campaign suggestions—such as nationwide stop-and-frisk, Mosque surveillance, and a Muslim registry—might become a chilling reality. Over the past several days, Trump has come under fire after Kobach first suggested that Trump could resurrect the George W. Bush-era NSEERS program, and a Trump surrogate argued that Japanese internment camps during World War II set a precedent for a Muslim registry. Kobach’s detailed plan to curtail immigration and deport undocumented immigrants, accidentally captured by a foreign news agency photographer, will assuredly fuel those fears.
Courtesy: Vanity Fair
