Muslim Ban 3.0 blaimed on ICAO passport standards and ‘ID management’

Invoking memes that we’ve seen and warned about before under both Democratic and Republican administrations, President Trump has attributed the latest version 3.0 of his ‘Muslim ban’announced today (proclamation, FAQ, explainer) with the need to comply with ICAO and INTERPOL standards for passport issuance, ‘identity management’, and data sharing about travelers – as though US immigration and asylum policy should be determined by an international technical body for aviation operations, as though such a body has the authority to override US treaty obligations to freedom of movement and ‘open skies’, and as though predictive pre-crime profiling based on ‘biographic and biometric data’ can be substituted for judicial fact-finding as a basis for denial of the right to travel.
Today’s Presidential proclamation extends the blacklisting-by-citizenship of the Muslim Ban 1.0 and Muslim Ban 2.0 to include a few token non-Muslim North Koreans and Venezuelan government officials, in an unsuccessful attempt to render its underlying Islamophobia less blatant.
In practice, the Muslim Ban 3.0 is similar in effect and intent to its predecessors. But in response to court decisions that have voided many of the provisions of the previous ‘Muslim Ban’ Executive Orders, the White House is making a new set of excuses for travel restrictions on citizens of certain countries that begins by ascribing them to other countries’ failure to implement ‘recommendations’ of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and INTERPOL for passports, ID management, and globalized traveler surveillance (‘data sharing’):
Q: What was the basis for the requirements?
A. The… report submitted by the Secretary of Homeland Security… established baseline requirements for 1) identity management practices and 2) information sharing….. The requirements reflect a combination of long-standing U. S. Government goals, as well as standards established by international bodies such as… the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and INTERPOL They incorporate best practices derived from… identity management practices, law enforcement practices, and national security initiatives, such as the adoption of ePassports…..

This post was published at Papers Please on Sept 24, 2017.