Donald Trump’s travel ban is back and more extreme than ever.
The former president rolled out a new and more ideologically-driven version of his 2017 policy at a rally in Iowa on Monday, first revealed in excerpts released by the Trump campaign.
He called for “strong ideological screening” for all immigrants entering the United States, in addition to suspending refugee resettlement by reinstating the Trump administration’s 2017 travel ban, which was targeted primarily at majority-Musilm countries. Trump pegged the new travel ban to the recent Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel.
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Trump listed several ideologies that would “disqualify” someone from immigrating to the United States.
“If you empathize with Radical Islamic terrorists and extremists, you're DISQUALIFIED—if you want to abolish the state of Israel, you're DISQUALIFIED,” Trump’s prepared speech read. “If you support Hamas or the ideology behind Hamas, you're DISQUALIFIED—and if you're a Communist, Marxist, or Fascist, you are DISQUALIFIED.”
Trump said that he would bar potential refugees from Gaza, the first time he’s included the territory on his blacklist. “We aren’t bringing in anyone from Gaza, Syria, Somalia, Yemen or Libya or anywhere else that threatens our security,” he said.
Trump also promised to “begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” specifically target toward “all the illegal aliens from countries that hate us.”
The rhetoric in the Iowa speech harkened back to his 2016 campaign, but was markedly more extreme. Trump promised that, should he win a second presidential term, he would “expand each and every one” of his previous bans.
“Under my administration, we will proactively send ICE to pro-jihadist demonstrations to enforce our immigration laws and remove the violators from our country,” another portion of the speech read.
Going beyond the 2017 travel ban, Trump is no longer focusing on the countries of origin he perceives as hostile to the United States—but is instead suggesting some kind of test to determine what people believe before they are eligible for citizenship.
“People say, ‘Oh, that's so mean,’ but I think meaner is when you have thousands of people being killed all over” Trump said on Monday of the proposal. “It’s one of those things.”
Notably, on America’s current citizenship test, immigrants are asked if they have ever been affiliated with the Communist Party or any other totalitarian party—a reference to actions, not beliefs.
Trump on Monday also began fundraising off the partial gag order placed on him by U.S. Judge Tanya Chutkan earlier in the day, though his prepared remarks did not include a reference to the decision.
