DelBene Floats Bill To Prevent Religious Registry

KIRKLAND, WA - U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Kirkland, on Monday moved to block federal officials from creating a registry based on religion. DelBene's proposed law - the No Religious Registry Act - comes after some of president-elect Donald Trump's surrogates talked about the merits of a so-called "Muslim registry."

Kris Kobach, a member of Trump's transition team and the Kansas Secretary of State, has said that he wants to reinstate a Bush-era registry of immigrants called the National Security Exit-Entry Registration System (NSEERS). The NSEERS program went into effect after the Sept. 11 attacks; it required that men over the age of 16 entering the U.S. on non-immigrant visas from certain countries - 24 out of 25 of those countries are majority-Muslim - register with the government. President Barack Obama suspended the use of the registry.

On Sunday, Trump's incoming chief of staff, Reince Priebus, said that the Trump administration would "not rule anything out" when asked about a registry, but followed that by saying, "We're not going to have a registry based on religion."

DelBene's bill would prevent federal officials - the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security in particular - from "establishing or utilizing a registry for the purposes of classifying individuals on the basis of religious affiliation."

"President-elect Donald Trump is breaking his promise to be a president for all Americans by supporting the creation of a Muslim registry," DelBene said in a statement. "This kind of xenophobic and hateful rhetoric has no place in our government. We cannot allow our country to disregard the civil liberties enshrined in the Constitution."

You can read more about DelBene's bill on her website.

Image via Suzan DelBene