With open border advocates occupied with trying to keep illegal immigrants in the country, President Trump acted this week to improve the screening process, so we can better prevent criminal aliens and terrorists from getting into the country,
On Tuesday, Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to establish the National Vetting Center (NVS) and begin work on centralizing the efforts of those agencies responsible for vetting immigrants and foreign visitors.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen M. Nielsen said the NVC “is yet another step towards knowing who is coming to the United States – that they are who they say they are and that they do not pose a threat to our nation.”
She maintained the center would to provide “frontline defenders” the real-time intelligence and law enforcement data necessary, but would not compromise the privacy, civil rights and civil liberties of American citizens.
“The Federal Government’s current vetting efforts are ad hoc, which impedes our ability to keep up with today’s threats,” said Press Secretary Sarah Sanders in a statement.
The purpose of the NVC is to consolidate vetting activities in a central location, thus “enabling officials to further leverage critical intelligence and law enforcement information to identify terrorists, criminals, and other nefarious actors trying to enter and remain within our country.”
The NVC would receive neither additional funding, nor authority to carry out its mission of closing the many loopholes in the nation’s vetting problem. Nevertheless, collecting information about the presence of foreign terrorists and criminals in our country could serve as an impetus for the government to act. The NVC may be a step in the right direction, but it is merely a small one given the existing loopholes and inefficiencies of the current system.
A January 2018 Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General report exposed the fact that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) fails to continuously screen nearly 2.4 million illegal aliens who remain under their supervision after their release from custody.
The report also noted ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) “may be missing opportunities” to identify and detain those aliens who pose the highest risk to national security and public safety. Furthermore, the OIG stated, “some local law enforcement agencies do not cooperate with ICE, which prevents ERO from screening many other criminal aliens.”