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.
We hope that seeing the “Muslim Ban 3.0” blamed on ICAO standards will lead human rights advocates to pay more attention to ICAO’s standard-setting role and opaque decision-making process in non-aviation matters such as passports, identity management, and data sharing.