Former top security officials file brief against Trump travel ban

A group of former Cabinet secretaries and national security officials under former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush have filed a brief in federal court arguing that President Trump’s travel ban does not make the nation safer.

The officials told the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that they were not aware of any specific national security threats that would justify the ban, and that in their opinion it makes the country and its troops less safe. The court will decide as soon as Tuesday whether to uphold a lower court’s decision to block Trump’s travel ban of seven majority-Muslim countries.

The amicus brief was signed by former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and John Kerry, former CIA directors Michael Hayden and Leon Panetta, former CIA deputy director Avril Haines, former CIA acting director Michael Morell, former Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, former national security adviser Susan Rice, and former counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco. The brief was also signed by John E. McLaughlin, the deputy director of the CIA under George W. Bush.

“Four of us (Haines, Kerry, Monaco and Rice) were current on active intelligence regarding all credible terrorist threat streams directed against the U.S. as recently as one week before the issuance of the Jan. 27, 2017 Executive Order,” the brief reads. “We all agree that the United States faces real threats from terrorist networks and must take all prudent and effective steps to combat them, including the appropriate vetting of travelers to the United States. We all are nevertheless unaware of any specific threat that would justify the travel ban established by the Executive Order issued on January 27, 2017.”

The former officials say they believe the ban “undermines” national security. “It does not perform its declared task of ‘protecting the nation from foreign terrorist entry into the United States,’” they write. “To the contrary, the Order disrupts thousands of lives, including those of refugees and visa holders all previously vetted by standing procedures that the Administration has not shown to be inadequate.”

They argue that the order could endanger U.S. troops abroad and “aid ISIL’s propaganda effort and serve its recruitment message by feeding into the narrative that the United States is at war with Islam.”

“It will hinder relationships with the very communities that law enforcement professionals need to address the threat,” they say. “It will have a damaging humanitarian and economic impact on the lives and jobs of American citizens and residents. And apart from all of these concerns, the Order offends our nation’s laws and values.”

A federal judge in Washington stayed Trump’s order on Friday as potentially unconstitutional, prompting a wave of Twitter attacks from Trump, who insinuated the judge was making the country less safe. Trump even told the public to blame both the judge and the court system at large if “something” happened — an apparent reference to a terror attack.

The Department of Homeland Security announced it would stop implementing the ban until the courts said otherwise. The Justice Department appealed the stay to the Ninth Circuit over the weekend, and that court has asked for briefs from both sides to consider as it makes its decision this week. The issue will most likely be finally decided by the Supreme Court.