Bizarre, Constitutional Law, International, Politics, Religion

Trump Calls For “Total and Complete Shutdown” of Muslims Entering The United States

495px-Donald_Trump_by_Gage_SkidmoreIn a truly shocking and facially unconstitutional plan, Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump is calling for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States. The plan would violate a host of domestic and international protections, as I discussed today with the Washington Post.


Trump stated that “[i]t is obvious to anybody the hatred [among Muslims] is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why, we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life.”

Trump said he would ease the ban in the case of Muslims serving in the U.S. military and allow them to return home. that is still well short of constitutional — or rational — plan. For Muslim citizens, such a plan would be grossly unconstitutional under the first and fifth amendments. The latter prohibits The depriving of individuals of “life, liberty, or property,” without due process of the law and an implicit guarantee of equal protection of the laws.

It is certainly true that the constitutional protections often turn on whether someone is consider a “person” under the United States Constitution. In Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982), the Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute denying funding for education to unauthorized immigrant children. Being present within the United States does afford protections of due process and equal protection. Outside of the country immigrants without resident status face a more difficult challenge. However, international law and conventions afford protections for travel and religion.

The law would harken back to the disgraceful period of the Chinese Exclusion laws. We have long rejected immigration limits based discriminatory classes of this kind. Indeed, the Immigration and Nationality Act protects potential refugees facing “fear of persecution” on account of their “religion.” Yet under President Trump we would now formally impose such a discriminatory element, a move that would make the United States a pariah around the world and immediately extinguish our relations with Islamic countries.

Immigration policy has cleared resonated as a draw for Trump. However, this proposal would openly embrace raw prejudice and blind rage as motivating factors for governmental policy. It would clearly fail in denying reentry for citizens or residents. As for non-citizens abroad, they are accorded protections under international law. Under Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, people have the right to leave or enter a country and that “everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” There is no doubt murky aspects to such rights and a long-standing question of their enforceability. However, this proposal rests on flagrant religious discrimination against one group. It seeks to “protect” the United States by denying the very essence of who we are as a nation.

250 thoughts on “Trump Calls For “Total and Complete Shutdown” of Muslims Entering The United States”

  1. Po,
    If the middle eastern nations truly are the lead in this war against radical Islam then I would see every one of them opening their doors to the refugees rather than forcing them into western cultures where they are bound to clash. How do you explain this lack of compassion within the Muslim world?

  2. Two!?

    Po,
    Setting that number aside, this global problem, where scores of attacks have been perpetrated by radicalized Muslims, is now in the United States. We don’t need peaceful Muslims defending Islam because this war is not with those Muslims that want to exercise their religion consistent with our rule of law. Islam is not our enemy anymore than Christians or Atheism. Our enemy has been and should always be those that want to destroy our constitutional republic…period. Just as we’ve seen the rise of the Tea Party and other conservative groups peacefully fighting against those undermining our rule of law, Muslims need to join non-Muslims in this war if we are to believe this religion of peace truly wants to be at peace with the west.

  5. *spurred calls

    By the way, olly, I though you more intellectually honest than that.
    Muslims are the lead aggressors against the radicalization of islam. To claim otherwise is to be deceptive.
    Two minutes online would prove my point. Do it.
    Considering that Islamic terrorism targets Muslims mostly, to pretend that Muslims are just deaf and unconcerned is simply a lie.
    And to claim that the west uses Muslims’ apathy to take this war to them is so fallacious as to be concussive. If you really believe that then we might as well end this discussion here because we operate from different realities.

    Again, the Us is responsible for more Muslim death in the last 10 years alone than the whole of islamic history. Deny it at the expense of your integrity.

  6. If immigration can’t be allowed based on religion then why were Russian Jews given preference under the Jackson amendment in 1974? Were gentile Russians allowed to come in 1974 or was it just Jews?

  7. Given the racial animosity toward blacks in the 19th century and the ensuing racial divide that we are Still suffering from, the idea that letting in millions of Chinese in the 19th century would’ve been a good one is insane.

    Frankly, given how many “sons of immigrants” and “grandsons of immigrants” are in favor of open borders, you can make a good case for the WASP’s closing the border to everyone around 1900.

  8. Po,
    Nice try but no, not a red herring. It was you that stated these other mass killings are from people with Christian backgrounds. If you weren’t implying they were being motivated by their religion then what was the point? Perhaps we have nut-jobs that may or may not believe they are acting on their Christian beliefs, however unlike those Muslim nut-jobs, I am unaware of any state sponsor of radical Christian terrorism. Even the western nations that believe they are in a just war with radical Islam are not supporting their cause according to the Bible. So keep trotting out that lame moral equivalency. When Muslims worldwide become the lead aggressors against the radicalization of Islam then the west won’t have any legitimate excuse to take this war to them.
    ————————————————–
    Olly, you ask what was my point? You missed it obviously, which makes a great deal of sense based on your focus.
    The fantastic majority of domestic terrorist acts being from white men from a christian background has NOT spurred for calls to target white men from a christian background, has it?
    Why not?
    Because most of us know that those acts do not define Christianity, don’t we?
    Yet, 2 terrorist acts from some with a Muslim background spurs us to discard our moral high ground, the moral principles upon which this country rests?
    That’s my point.

  10. Since the topic is about Trump it only seems appropriate to state this as clearly and un-p.c as possible like he would. po’s an idiot.

  11. “The left claims 355 mass shootings this year along while Mother Jones’ research shows only 73 mass shootings since 1982. How can this be?

    It is easy to understand when you consider the standard FBI measure for a mass shootings is four fatalities in one incident. And while Mother Jones is holding to this standard to judge what is or isn’t a mass shooting, the left is using outlets like Shooting Tracker, which says, “a mass shooting is when four or more people are shot in an event, or related series of events, likely without a cooling off period.”

    A definition like the one used by shooting tracker opens the door to start counting gang violence, drive-by shootings, and other such incidents as “mass shootings.” Although there are no deaths–and there may be more than one shooting incident involved–every time four people are injured Shooting Tracker and the left counts one more mass shooting.

    In reality, a shooting which no one is killed should simply be referred to as a shooting or an “attempted murder” or something similar, as it always has been. A shooting in which one is killed is a murder. If two are killed, it’s a double murder. If three are killed–as in the November 27 Planned Parenthood attack–it’s a triple murder. But when four or more are killed then–and only then–do the words “mass shooting” apply.

    The four attacks Mother Jones reports as reaching the threshold for a mass shooting in 2015 are Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church (9 killed), the military offices in Chattanooga (5 killed). Umpqua Community College (9 killed), and San Bernardino (14 killed).”

    Source

  12. “An FBI report released on September 16th, 2014 makes the assertion that active shooter attacks and deaths have increased dramatically since 2000 – both increasing at an annual rate of about 16 percent. As the headline in the Wall Street Journal stated: “Mass Shootings on the Rise, FBI says.”

    But the FBI made a number of subtle and misleading decisions as well as outright errors. Once these biases and mistakes are fixed, the annual growth rate in homicides is cut in half. When a longer period of time is examined (1977 through the first half of 2014), deaths from Mass Public Shootings show only a slight, statistically insignificant, increase – an annual increase of less than one percent.

    The FBI’s misleadingly includes cases that aren’t mass shootings – cases where no one or only one person was killed in a public place. While the FBI assures people that it “captured the vast majority of incidents falling within the search criteria,” their report missed 20 shootings where at least two people were killed in a public place. Most of these missing cases took place early on, biasing their results towards showing an increase.”

    The FBI’s Misrepresentation of the Change in Mass Public Shootings

    John R. Lott Jr.
    Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Today, March 2015
    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=2524731

  13. Banning Muslims from visiting or immigrating to the U.S. would be unconstitutional ONLY if non-U.S. citizens had a constitutional right to visit or immigrate here. The U.S. has the right to regulate both visitation and immigration. Much as I dislike Trump for his arrogance and general bombasticity, when people are so motivated by their own interpretation of their religion that they’d rather kill innocent people than stay alive to raise their infant child, and when there is no reliable way to determine which members of a group have become radicalized, then banning them is appropriate.

  14. Again, These comments by Trump are not as much about Obama as they are about separating himself from his Republican opponents.

  15. “I am waiting for us to go after all the other groups concerned.
    And how many are they? The majority was from white men from a Christian background.”

    Po,
    Nice try but no, not a red herring. It was you that stated these other mass killings are from people with Christian backgrounds. If you weren’t implying they were being motivated by their religion then what was the point? Perhaps we have nut-jobs that may or may not believe they are acting on their Christian beliefs, however unlike those Muslim nut-jobs, I am unaware of any state sponsor of radical Christian terrorism. Even the western nations that believe they are in a just war with radical Islam are not supporting their cause according to the Bible. So keep trotting out that lame moral equivalency. When Muslims worldwide become the lead aggressors against the radicalization of Islam then the west won’t have any legitimate excuse to take this war to them.

  16. Trump was rather given an opportunity by Obama. If he had brought forward some solid plan to really fight ISIS no one would have come with such outburst. Obama’s inaction thus helped Trump’s over action. President took more time to defend Muslims in America as if they are under severe attack. Like other Americans it the duty of Muslim community to come out openly and condemn the evil force that is hurting everybody including them. They should proclaim solidarity with the rest of Americans and that will send a clear signal to the enemy of mankind called ISIS. Trump has been surviving on fear tactic. He started with immigration and his Great Wall of Mexico and when it became no more interesting he got a new weapon in the form of Islam. We all should fight radical Islam and not Muslims. But our President is so allergic to use the word radical Islam for whatever reasons. Trump’s rhetoric will pass as the days go but Americans including a vast number of Democrats feel the approach towards ISIS is not at all effective.President said they are contained but they are never in the container.

  18. Since I’ve got my dear friend karen here, whom I miss a great deal, I’ll take the opportunity to ask her again to please enlighten us about her views on extremism. Her views are very insightful, and I think we all could use to know and learn from them.
    Being a bit shy, she is very reluctant to stand out, but hey, it is for the greater good, especially since she started the conversation.
    ————————–
    karen said to Po:
    Do you consider crashing a van deliberately into a civilian bus stop, hitting people, and then jumping out with a knife to stab a woman with a baby a terrorist attack? Yes or now. And this time answer the question.

    Po answered:
    yes, I do!
    Do YOU consider the bombing of hospitals, of schools, of ambulances, the dropping of a missile on 4 kids playing on the beach, the lighting of a sleeping family on fire a terrorist act? Yes or no? And this time answer the question!

  19. Interesting that those who want to void the 2nd Amendment and disarm us and prosecute us for exercising the free speech rights of the 1st Amendment are the ones who are squawking the loudest that Trump is proposing UN-Constitutional measures on immigration.

    Self awareness is not a quality that the left possesses.

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