While these short-term travel restrictions will be at the heart of what the Supreme Court considers this fall, they have never been the president’s ultimate objective. Instead, his endgame, as he repeatedly made clear on the campaign trail, is the “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” And in a quiet, under-the-radar manner, his administration has been hard at work to make that happen.
The State Department has already moved to implement the president’s “extreme vetting” directive by imposing new, onerous visa application requirements. Several weeks ago, the agency invoked emergency review and approval procedures to push through these changes with minimal public comment or scrutiny. They force applicants to submit years’ worth of personal data, including from social media accounts.
Of course, not all visa applicants are subject to this review; it’s only for “populations warranting increased scrutiny.” But everyone knows that term is code for people from predominantly Muslim countries. Even before these requirements were enacted, those people had to endure invasive questioning and prolonged processing times. The Trump administration has simply formalized this as official government policy.
With little fanfare, the administration has also walked back a commitment to speed up the time it takes to get a visa. At the end of June, President Trump rescinded an Obama-era executive order that had required the State Department to make sure that a vast majority of interviews for nonimmigrant visa applicants happen “within three weeks of receipt of application.”
