For more than two decades, large swathes of American foreign and domestic policy have been organised around terrorism: This spectre was used as the rationale for two major wars, the reorientation of all intelligence agencies, the creation of a Department of Homeland Security, and the weakening of rights of privacy, free speech, and basic legal representation. The proportionality between these responses and the threats actually posed was always tenuous: More than twice as many Americans were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, as in the attacks of 9/11.
In the second Trump Administration, however, the US has used the pretext of terrorism in a new way: It is now deployed primarily in the context of immigration. Next week, most visitors from 19 nations will be barred from entering the United States. Counterterrorism is the stated goal, but the real purpose has less to do with national security and is more about national identity.
Donald Trump’s latest travel prohibition hearkened back to the “Muslim ban” of his first term, which was struck down by the courts but revived in a more limited way. The current order, like the original “Muslim ban”, bars entry to citizens based solely on nationality rather than any specific risk factors. Its rationale is clearly stated — the title of the proclamation is “Restricting the Entry of Foreign Nationals to Protect the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats”.
This pretext, however, had little to do with the action itself. The nations targeted for complete or partial exclusion are spread across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America, and 15 out of the 19 have one thing in common: None of their citizens has ever been involved in any terrorist action in the United States; records are less clear globally, but no citizen of these nations seems to have been involved in terrorist actions against American targets anywhere.
The nations that have produced the most dangerous terrorist threats to America are all absent from the list. Saudi Arabia supplied all but four of the 9/11 hijackers, as well as their ringleader, Osama bin Laden; last month, Trump travelled to the Kingdom and gushed over its de facto ruler, saying “I like him too much.” Neither the other nations whose citizens participated in the hijackings (United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Lebanon), nor the nation that subsequently sheltered Al Qaeda’s leadership for a decade (Pakistan) were included in the ban.
Of the 12 nations completely banned and seven others slapped with sweeping travel restrictions, only five (Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia) could be considered terrorism concerns, and citizens of these countries already face exclusion or exceptionally close scrutiny. The other 14 nations sanctioned present no such threat: Myanmar, Haiti, Eritrea, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Cuba, Laos, Venezuela, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Togo and Turkmenistan. Since the terrorism rationale is evidently hollow, why single them out?
As is the explanation for so much in the Trump administration: Immigration. The proclamation charges these nations with “historic failure to accept back their removable nationals” who “pose significant risks of overstaying their visas.” Such allegations may or may not hold up, but they clearly have nothing to do with terrorism. In his remarks, Trump cited a recent attack in Colorado by a man originally from Egypt (not a nation on the banned list), but he then revealed more than he may have intended about the people targeted: “We don’t want them.”
This is the difference between the current counterterrorism rationale and that used by Trump’s predecessors. If George W Bush, Barack Obama or Joe Biden had used terrorism as the motivation for banning large classes of people, he would have said (and genuinely meant), They’re a threat to our security. Trump essentially admits that the threat isn’t truly part of the equation. The reason for the exclusion is just that we don’t want them.
That encapsulates the MAGA obsession with immigration. It’s the top of the movement’s agenda, and may well have won Trump his second term, but there is remarkably little discussion in America about why immigrants represent a threat. Because they’re taking jobs from citizens? Unemployment is low, and many of the jobs taken by immigrants (especially undocumented ones) are poorly-paid agricultural and industrial work that Americans don’t want. Because they overwhelm public services? Sometimes, but immigrants contribute far more to America’s economy than they draw from it. Because they fuel crime? Immigrants (including those who’ve come here illegally) have lower crime rates than native-born.
The heart of the matter is exactly what Trump said it was: The roughly half of the nation that supports him feels threatened by the demographic changes represented by immigrants from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Do people from Laos or Togo actually represent a terrorist threat? Of course not. And nobody believes that they do. But they need a rationale to give cover to their discomfort.
America is in transition from a nation in which a majority of citizens look like Trump to one in which a majority look like — well, like his 2024 election rival Kamala Harris. And most of Trump’s supporters are uneasy about this transformation. Many don’t like to admit it. Many prefer to believe that the issue really is crime, or inflation, or ever-more-remote connections to the threat of terrorism. But with his latest travel ban, Trump is barely even pretending to maintain this façade. He offers up terrorism as a comforting veil, makes little effort to keep it from slipping. The President and his supporters just don’t want them.
The writer is the author of Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God: Retracing the Ramayana Through India and Mullahs on the Mainframe: Islam and Modernity Among the Daudi Bohras
The heart of the matter is exactly what Trump said it was: The roughly half of the nation that supports him feels threatened by the demographic changes represented by immigrants from Africa, Asia and Latin America. 
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