On January 27, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to ban visas to the United States to nationals from seven countries: Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, which are all Muslim-majority nations.
This resulted in global confusion as hundreds of travelers and visa-holding immigrants were detained in airports across the US. Also International companies, academic institutions, and even the international air transport association have raised serious concerns regarding the detrimental impact of the order on their staff and ability to conduct business. Even Trump's own employees took a bold and public stance against the ban.
It also has enraged world leaders and was condemned by UN officials. The new secretary general of the UN, Antonio Guterres, said that Trump's executive actions "violate our basic principles … [and] are not effective if the objective is to indeed avoid terrorists to enter the United States."
Although a federal judge halted his executive order, there is something peculiar about this list. The draft of the executive order begins by citing 9/11 as a failure of the "visa-issuance process". It blames the state department for preventing "counselor officers from properly scrutinizing the visa applications of several of the 19 foreign nationals who went on to murder 3000 Americans."
The overwhelming majority of those individuals were from Saudi Arabia, yet, Saudi Arabia is not on the list. Furthermore, when it comes to "homegrown terrorism" of all the Muslims accused, charged, convicted and killed, some of them are from these seven countries in Trump's list and some are not, some are immigrants and some are American citizens, and a number of them have been entrapped by federal law-enforcement agencies. This either means that the list needs to be much longer or there is something more than national security concerns at play.
Trump promised a "Muslim Ban" as part of his election strategy. He got support for his unlikely candidacy by fomenting the already seething tide of anti-Muslim racism in the US. The way anti-Muslim racism works is that Islam and Muslims are a bogeyman, hated and feared because of how they are "different", i.e. by how they look and what they do. Muslims are bogeymen not solely because some Muslims are guilty of violent acts against Americans.
As was reported not too long after white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine black Americans in Charleston, white Americans cause the largest numbers of American deaths by terrorist acts on US soil. Yet unsurprisingly, Trump has not signed any executive orders specifically targeting white Americans. This is because Islam and Muslims have been "othered" - made to be seen as distinctly and most despicably bad and evil in the popular imagination.
Violence against women, honour killings in particular, is cited two times in the draft as something from which the US government is obliged to protect Americans. This specific practice of violence against women has been sutured to Arabs and Muslims in popular conversation. It builds on a broader narrative that Muslim women are oppressed by the men in their lives, their families and the religion they follow, and they need saving - by the US.
Recall, Laura Bush's call to support the invasion of Afghanistan to save Muslim women. By explicitly including honour killings, Trump is basically telling his supporters "I told you I'd do something about this bogeyman and look, I am." And this something is doubly significant for people who believe we need to "make America great again", because it is not only standing against the evils of "Islamic extremism", but it is allegedly standing up for democracy and freedom.
It feeds into an idea that violence against women is a particularly Muslim thing, due to their backwards culture. Yet in the US, every minute nearly 20 people, the majority of whom women, are victims of intimate partner abuse. However, Trump is not ramping up protections for violence against women here at home.
In fact, while he is marking himself the anti-honour killings crusader abroad, he is cutting funding for the Office on Violence Against Women. This means cuts to programmes around the country that try to prevent domestic violence and provide services, like transitional housing and legal aid - services that would surely be of benefit to the white and working-class women among Trump's supporters.
Smoke and mirrors
Trump also promised jobs and to that end, he signed an executive order to push forward the Dakota Access Pipeline. But of all the jobs he promises, only about 40 will be permanent, which is peculiar considering Trump supporters presumably want permanent work.
He also promised to protect Americans from the scourge of illegal immigration by building a wall. He signed that executive order this week and missing from much of that fanfare is the small detail that taxpayers, and not Mexico, will be footing part of the bill.
And while there has yet to be an executive order, Trump's recent declaration that he would send the "feds" to Chicago to stop what he called "American carnage" at his inauguration, only thinly veils the real objective: militarisation on the home front. And while that will initially target those living in the 'scary' inner cities, it will ultimately compromise the liberty his supporters hold so dear.
Trump has further publicly and falsely stated that his order will protect our national security. But the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, acknowledging states' legitimate interests in maintaining public security and combating terrorism, has warned against the effects of making exceptions, or, in his words, "the erosion of long-standing refugee protection principles".
The most fundamental refugee legal principle incorporated into the Refugee Convention and obligatory even outside Convention ratification, is that of non-refoulement or not returning someone to a place where they are likely to be subjected to persecution.
Trump's un-American and unconstitutional action doesn't just violate the Refugee Convention - it flies in the face of other sources of international law that bind us.
The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, or ICERD, to which the US is bound, requires states parties to "guarantee the right of everyone, without distinction as to race, colour, or national or ethnic origin, to equality before the law."
US violations of this treaty precede the Trump administration, and have already been so flagrant and obvious that nearly identical concerns were addressed by the ICERD's committee after 9/11.
The Committee expressed concern at the US government's discriminatory anti-terrorism measures and remarked that "measures taken in the fight against terrorism must not discriminate, in purpose or effect, on the grounds of race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin."
The executive order also contravenes the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), another treaty to which the US is a state party.
Article 26 of the ICCPR requires equal treatment before the law of all persons, without discrimination on any ground, including race, religion, or national or social origin.
Article 4 of the ICCPR notes that even in a "time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation", states cannot take any action to stray from their obligations that involve discrimination "solely on the ground of race, colour, sex, language, religion or social origin".
So, what is at play here? Trump is continuing what he started on the campaign trail. He is tapping into the fear that breeds the kind of xenophobia that gets folks excited about walls and bans, only to distract them from all the promises he won't be keeping.
In this way, these moves are a bunch of smoke and mirrors, for which Trump has become pretty famous. However, that doesn't mean these distractions aren't dangerous. Indeed, they are. They are a danger to the communities of colour they target. Likewise, they are dangerous for Trump supporters who will find that even with bans and walls, they will still be left behind.
sources:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-muslim-travel-ban-judge-blame-court-immigration-syria-terrorism-a7564316.html
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/01/trump-muslim-ban-dangerous-distraction-170128144523073.html
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/02/international-laws-trump-muslim-ban-breaking-170202135132664.html
Quoted and edited: Negar Paidar