Speaking to Republican voters in New Hampshire, Donald Trump Monday afternoon promised to implement ideological and religious purity testing for all immigrants wanting to enter the United States.
“I will implement strong ideological screening of all immigrants,” Trump promised. “If you hate America, if you want to abolish Israel, if you don’t like our religion, which a lot of them don’t, if you sympathize with the jihadists, then we don’t want you in our country and you are not getting in.”
The United States does not have a religion, and the U.S. Constitution bans any formal establishment of any religion:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” the First Amendment reads in part.
The threat is consistent with Trump’s early anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim remarks, and later, as president, his acts.
In 2015, then-candidate Donald Trump infamously declared, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
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Later that year Trump declared, “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”
In one of his first major acts as President, just one week after being sworn into office, Trump implemented his infamous “Muslim ban,” signing an executive order titled, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.”
That order banned immigrants from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen. Iraq. It was later altered and rescinded with new executive orders as the courts moved to block it and others.
Watch Trump’s remarks from New Hampshire below or at this link.
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