Naureen Shah, the Director of Amnesty International USA’s Security & Human Rights Program, pledged that her group plans to organize protests against Donald Trump’s planned immigration and refugee programs.
In a Daily Beast article about the potential for the Trump administration to implement tough anti-terrorism measures including stopping the flow of Syrian refugees, “extreme vetting questions,” and a plan that “all aliens from high-risk areas are tracked,” Amnesty International USA’s Naureen Shah said, “We will create the public pressure and international community pressure to make these kinds of proposals untenable.”
The potential plans were revealed by possible head of Department of Homeland Security Kris Kobach. As the Topeka Capital-Journal reported:
A written plan for the Department of Homeland Security brought by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach into his meeting with President-elect Donald Trump spells out a desire to question “high-risk” immigrants over support for Sharia law and the U.S. Constitution.
Kobach, an early Trump supporter, met with the president-elect on Sunday and has been mentioned as a potential pick for a position within the administration. Some speculation has centered on the secretary of Homeland Security, and Kobach’s plan appears to lend credence to that possibility.
Although Kobach revealed the information accidentally, the plan coincides with the already stated intentions and proposals made by candidate Donald Trump. As Time reported, “The details of the document align with many of the promises Trump made on the campaign trail, which is little surprise given Kobach’s connection to the campaign and his stance on immigration.”
In calling for potential protests, Amnesty International USA’s Shah referred to the implementation of the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System – or NSEERS – the extreme vetting, and the shutdown of the refugee program as an attempt to “govern based on bigotry and fear-mongering about the Muslim other.”
In his role in the George W. Bush Department of Justice, Kobach was one of the chief architects of NSEERS.
Critics assailed the NSEERS program for focusing on Muslims. In 2011, President Obama effectively suspended the program by removing all 25 countries from its list.
CNN reports that on Wednesday, a group of pro-Muslim and institutional leftist groups are calling on President Obama to dismantle NSEERS completely before leaving office:
Nearly 200 organizations concerned that President-elect Donald Trump may revive the National Security Exit-Entry Registration System, known as NSEERS, once used to register and track mostly Arabs and Muslims, are asking President Barack Obama to abolish the program before he leaves office.
In a letter delivered to the Obama administration on Monday, the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, or ADC, blasted NSEERS for being “ineffective as a counterterrorism tool” and causing “tremendous harm” to immigrant communities. The letter was signed by 197 other organizations, including the National Council of La Raza, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights.
The NSEERS program is “a system for registering certain non-citizens within the United States” and has two separate components: port-of-entry registration and domestic registration. Port-of-entry registration is required for nationals of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and Syria in addition to any other non-citizen, non-permanent residents determined in advance.
The domestic registration required that “non-citizens who were in the United States prior to September 10, 2002”—specifically “males over the age of sixteen who entered the United States legally on particular types of visa (primarily student, work, and tourist) from certain countries”—register in person.
Follow Breitbart News investigative reporter and Citizen Journalism School founder Lee Stranahan on Twitter at @Stranahan.
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