Extreme vetting: Risk management or a travel ban?

As we await President Trump’s re-write of Executive Order 9066 that likely will restate a temporary ban of peoples from seven majority Muslim countries, we will have a second chance to decide whether the intent is prudent risk management, or a dangerous step toward a ban on peoples from entering the United States because of their faith.

We will know much if the revised rollout next week again emphasizes the false logic that “extreme vetting” can ensure that all people entering the homeland from these seven countries will be bullet proof safe for entry, and have permanent and total adherence to U.S. law. This standard is neither possible or practical. 

{mosads}Total confidence in “extreme vetting” to prevent future violence is not a realistic objective, but there are important tools to increase the likelihood of stopping bad actors from ever entering the country.  Blending these tools with risk management methodology could make us safer without sacrificing our national character. Call it “risk-based, smarter vetting.”

Risk management acknowledges risk can be bought down but not eliminated.  Effective security means focusing on higher (and highest) consequence threats, consistent with available resources and not tilting unacceptably in favor of one variable (security) over another (commerce and trade). It recognizes that no approach, no matter what you call it, will be able to validate the permanent bona fides and intentions of all potential entrants with one a hundred percent certainty. 

According to a recently released report from the conservative Cato Institute we have extraordinarily effective risk management protocols for ensuring refugees are not terrorists intent on doing us harm.  According to Cato, the chance of being killed by one of the one million refugees that entered the United States since the 1970s is one in 3.6 billion.

Risk management is a means for allocating resources where they are needed most. Extreme vetting could be a form of risk management, but extreme vetting will not get us to the certainty the president implies is needed before refugees from war torn countries can be granted asylum.

The U.S. law enforcement, intelligence and homeland security communities have long practiced risk management in determining who is an appropriate candidate for entry. These approaches are valid and can be made stronger. Technology that better aggregates all source structured and unstructured data, stores and appropriately shares it, collates for meaning and augments efforts to define persons of interest is central to an improved methodology. Cognitive computing is a force multiplier for risk management.

Extreme vetting implies something more and better than what is already being done. So, what are U.S. law enforcement, homeland security and intelligence communities already doing before approving refugees for entry into the country? In short, a lot.

Current U.S. protocols for vetting refugees is a nearly two-year process that includes repeated in person interviews, screening against all relevant classified and unclassified data bases, utilizing biometric validators, and determinations at interagency meetings. Hae Yun Park and Larry Buchanan wrote recently in The New York Times that less than one percent of the most vulnerable refugees make it through the U.N. refugee screening process that before even entering the American screening process.

Having served as the senior defense official in Washington’s second highest interagency national security circle, known as the Deputies Committee, I can attest to its scope and how seriously this process is taken.

Yet, in the final analysis, these are judgment calls. There are no one hundred percent certainty determinations, and one terror attack in the United States is too many. Yet, we are already credibly balancing comprehensive, robust assessments balancing risk with care for humans in grave distress.

The U.S. relies on a risk-management approach to stopping illegal entry into the United States at our nation’s land borders. Former Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher emphasized in a recent article that it is not realistic to fully seal the U.S.’ southern and northern borders. He writes that “risk is better understood and measured over time when coupled with understanding of our vulnerabilities and the consequences of our actions and inaction. This would lower risk…” There is risk, and there will always be risk.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has made tremendous headway managing threat by isolating those that can be trusted for faster screening from those that cannot. TSA’s Trusted Travel/PreCheck Program is a model of risk-based screening that is increasing security and facilitating commerce. Its risk based approach is better for the traveling public and provides more security at less cost.

These examples highlight the importance of building realistic modern, reliant on realistic objectives, to buy down risk without shutting national borders to travelers, commerce and even refugees.

Assuming the president’s real intent is not to ban a class of refugees because of their religion, he must set a realistic standard that does not make the unattainable promise that no one will be allowed into the country unless there is total certainty that they are who they say they are and that their hearts will be pure forevermore.

Todd M. Rosenblum was a Deputy Under Secretary of Intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security, Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense, and a Professional Staff Member on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.