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Potential Trump Homeland Security chief accidentally reveals agenda

President-elect Donald Trump pauses pose for photographs as he greets Kansas Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster clubhouse, Sunday, Nov. 20, 2016, in Bedminster, N.J. (Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach holding papers that accidentally reveal part of his strategic plan for the Department of Homeland Security. (Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach inadvertently revealed some of his agenda for the Department of Homeland Security when he was photographed heading into a Sunday meeting with President-elect Donald Trump.

Kobach, who is said to be a potential pick for Trump’s administration and is assisting him with the transition, was clutching a piece of paper titled “Department of Homeland Security: Kobach Strategic Plan for First 365 Days” when he posed for a photo with Trump on Sunday. The Topeka Capital-Journal zoomed in on the sheet, which reveals he is suggesting that the U.S. immediately stop accepting Syrian refugees, begin asking “extreme” vetting questions of immigrants from “high-risk” areas and reinstate a post-9/11 registry program to track immigrants from “high-risk” countries.

The visible part of the plan notably does not mention temporarily halting immigration from Muslim-majority nations altogether, an idea that Trump championed during his campaign.

“Update and reintroduce the NSEERS screening and tracking system (National Security Entry-Exit Registration System) that was in place from 2002-2005. All aliens from high-risk areas are tracked,” the document reads. “Add extreme vetting questions for high-risk aliens: question them regarding support for Sharia law, jihad, equality of men and women, the United States Constitution.”

NSEERS was a post-9/11 program that tracked male visitors to the U.S. over 16 years old from 25 countries, almost all of them Muslim-majority nations. The program did not result in a single terrorism conviction, according to CNN, but did result in the deportation of more than 13,000 people. A Department of Homeland Security inspector general report recommended the program be terminated, citing that new technology had rendered the registry “obsolete.”

President-elect Donald Trump pauses pose for photographs as he greets Kansas Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster clubhouse, Sunday, Nov. 20, 2016, in Bedminster, N.J. (Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)
President-elect Donald Trump and Kobach at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., on Nov. 20. (Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Kobach’s plan also calls for accepting zero Syrian refugees going forward. The U.S. accepted 12,000 Syrian refugees since the civil war there began five years ago. Trump made halting the flow of Syrian refugees a focal point of his campaign. “It could be one of the great Trojan horses of all time,” Trump said of Syrian refugees seeking entry to the U.S.

The document also apparently mentions drafting “amendments” to the National Voter Registration Act, but the text that explains how it would be amended is obscured by Kobach’s arm. In Kansas, Kobach championed a state law that required Kansas residents to prove their citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections. The Supreme Court struck down a similar law in Arizona in 2013, with a majority opinion written by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.

Kobach could seek to amend the legislation to make it easier for states to demand proof of citizenship from voters. Requiring citizens to show photo ID to vote disproportionately affects poor, older and black voters. (About a quarter of black citizens over 18 years old do not have a photo ID, compared to 8 percent of white voters, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.)

The document also refers to “1,989 miles” of a border wall, potentially alluding to Trump’s promise to build a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, and references a plan to deport in the first year a “record number” of undocumented immigrants who have been arrested for any crime.