Government Claims It Has “Extensive” Analysis Backing the Travel Ban—It’s Not True

In justifying President Trump ’s travel ban to the Supreme Court last month, his attorneys repeatedlyreferenced a confidential report. They told the Court that this “extensive” analysis of “every country in the world” resulted from a “worldwide multi-agency review” and proves that the president did not act with religious animus. Yet they refuse to release it, and the information that they have released about it refutes their claim that it was extens ive. In fact, it was far from rigorous.In response toa lawsuit by the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, the governmentdisclosed that its final secret report filed in September was just 16 pages with a one-page attachment. Yet the presidentclaims it reviewed “more than 200 countries,” meaning it covered each country in less than a tenth of a page. On a typical 600-word page, that’s fewer than 60 words—significantly shorter than this paragraph—to review the identity systems, information practices, and security situation in every country in the world.We now know that this 60-word average is actually too generous for most countries because the government has said that the report included the information on the eight targeted countries and the explanation for the ban contained in the president ’s12-page travel ban order. If it dedicated the other five pages solely to the non-travel ban countries, this would leave just 16 words for each. “The Democratic Republic of the Congo” would use a third of its ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs