One week after taking office in January 2017, Trump signed his first Muslim ban.[1] Even if we set aside the ethics of this executive order, and we should not, the near-universal consensus is that the administration’s execution of this ban was a total disaster. It contained numerous obvious legal problems—e.g., it confused short-term travelers with green card holders—and the roll out was beyond botched. Just one (egregious) example: the administration didn’t think through what to do about people already in the air.
In Border Wars [2], a recently released book on the Trump Administration’s immigration policy, Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Shear offer a behind-the-scenes account of how the Muslim ban came to pass. You’ll have to read their book to get the full details [3], but the short version is that a small group within the administration, led by Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, drafted the ban outside of the normal inter-agency process. Instead of giving relevant experts at the National Security Council, the Department of Justice, or the Department of Homeland Security time to weigh in and plan, Trump abruptly signed off on the policy on a Friday evening. The image that came to define this policy misfire was chaos at our major airports as people with what they thought were valid visas were unable to get into the country. (Here are 37 photos in case you want to remind yourself of what it looked like that time.)
You might have thought that Trump’s inner circle would have learned from this experience. After all, they issued the Muslim ban during their first week in power, so it’s perhaps understandable that they did not know how to manage a complex bureaucracy like the federal government. But, at least with respect to immigration policy, the same pattern has repeated again and again. From building a border wall to deciding to separate families at the border, the administration’s policy issuance and implementation has been poorly coordinated and poorly planned.
The same story repeated itself last week. Trump gave an Oval Office Address on Wednesday March 11th announcing a plan to halt travel from Europe. The speech, reportedly drafted by Stephen Miller and Jared Kushner, was filled with inaccurate statements and rolled out a policy the government was not prepared to implement. The result, once again? Chaos at our major airports as thousands of travelers waited in line for hours to clear customs. In the process, these travelers were likely exposed to coronavirus, and are thus likely to in turn spread around the country even more.
These two incidents of airport chaos illustrate how, three years apart, Trump is still relying on a small group of loyalists who do not understand how to manage the complex federal bureaucracy. Unfortunately, although the administration has made plenty of mistakes, it does not seem to be learning from them.
____
[1] I know the media, courts, and even Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_travel_ban) have decided to play nice and call this executive order a “Travel Ban.” If you read the history of how it came to pass, it’s pretty clear that the Trump administration wasn’t motivated by fear of too many “travelers.”
[2] This is not sponsored content, but if you’re looking to buy a book, consider ordering from the Seminary Co-op Bookstores, which is the country’s first not-for-profit bookstores whose mission is book selling.
[3] I moderated a discussion last month with Julie and Michael about their book for the Institute of Politics. If you’re interested in learning more about the Trump Administration’s immigration policy, the video is available here.