Trump Team Is Mulling Muslim Registry And Planning Border Wall, Reported Adviser Says.…

NEW YORK/​WASHINGTON, Nov 15 (Reuters) — An archi­tect of anti-immi­gra­tion efforts who says he is advis­ing President-elect Donald Trump said the new admin­is­tra­tion could push ahead rapid­ly on con­struc­tion of a U.S.-Mexico bor­der wall with­out seek­ing imme­di­ate con­gres­sion­al approval.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who is report­ed­ly being con­sid­ered for the post of attor­ney gen­er­al, said in an inter­view that Trump’s pol­i­cy advis­ers had also dis­cussed draft­ing a pro­pos­al for his con­sid­er­a­tion to rein­state a reg­istry for immi­grants from Muslim countries.

Kobach, who media reports say is a key mem­ber of Trump’s tran­si­tion team, said he had par­tic­i­pat­ed in reg­u­lar con­fer­ence calls with about a dozen Trump immi­gra­tion advis­ers for the past two to three months.

Trump’s tran­si­tion team did not respond to requests for con­fir­ma­tion of Kobach’s role. The pres­i­dent-elect has not com­mit­ted to fol­low­ing any spe­cif­ic rec­om­men­da­tions from advi­so­ry groups.

Trump, who scored an upset vic­to­ry last week over Democrat Hillary Clinton, made build­ing a wall on the U.S.-Mexico bor­der a cen­tral issue of his cam­paign and has pledged to step up immi­gra­tion enforce­ment against the country’s 11 mil­lion undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants. He has also said he sup­ports “extreme vet­ting” of Muslims enter­ing the United States as a nation­al secu­ri­ty measure.

Kobach told Reuters last Friday that the immi­gra­tion group had dis­cussed draft­ing exec­u­tive orders for the president-elect’s review “so that Trump and the Department of Homeland Security hit the ground running.”

To imple­ment Trump’s call for “extreme vet­ting” of some Muslim immi­grants, Kobach said the immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy group could rec­om­mend the rein­state­ment of a nation­al reg­istry of immi­grants and vis­i­tors who enter the United States on visas from coun­tries where extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tions are active.

Kobach helped design the pro­gram, known as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, while serv­ing in Republican President George W. Bush’s Department of Justice after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States by al Qaeda militants.

Under NSEERS, peo­ple from coun­tries deemed “high­er risk” were required to under­go inter­ro­ga­tions and fin­ger­print­ing on enter­ing the United States. Some non-cit­i­zen male U.S. res­i­dents over the age of 16 from coun­tries with active mil­i­tant threats were required to reg­is­ter in per­son at gov­ern­ment offices and peri­od­i­cal­ly check in.

NSEERS was aban­doned in 2011 after it was deemed redun­dant by the Department of Homeland Security and crit­i­cized by civ­il rights groups for unfair­ly tar­get­ing immi­grants from Muslim- major­i­ty nations.

Kobach said the immi­gra­tion advis­ers were also look­ing at how the Homeland Security Department could move rapid­ly on bor­der wall con­struc­tion with­out approval from Congress by reap­pro­pri­at­ing exist­ing funds in the cur­rent bud­get. He acknowl­edged “that future fis­cal years will require addi­tion­al appropriations.”

Congress, which is con­trolled by Trump’s fel­low Republicans, could object to redi­rect­ing DHS funds des­ig­nat­ed for oth­er pur­pos­es. Read more here : http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​r​e​p​o​r​t​e​d​-​t​r​u​m​p​-​i​m​m​i​g​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​a​d​v​i​s​o​r​-​s​a​y​s​-​h​e​s​-​d​r​a​f​t​i​n​g​-​p​l​a​n​-​f​o​r​-​m​u​s​l​i​m​-​r​e​g​i​s​t​r​y​_​u​s​_​5​8​2​c​5​9​b​d​e​4​b​0​1​d​8​a​0​1​4​b​6​328