Global Security and Intelligence Studies Volume 3, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2018 | Page 38

Enemy at the Gates: The Consequential Effects of Securitizing Immigration
ulation as expressed in Senator Sterling’s statement concerning the Japanese. Presently,
the Executive and the lower federal courts have provided somewhat different
interpretations of the SLPP vis-à-vis immigration and Security. For instance, when
the Trump Administration put forth the initial travel ban, the “states of Washington
and Minnesota, along with a series of large corporations, then brought actions
stating that these orders violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment
and that, as aggrieved parties, they had standing to litigate. The complaints
listed a multitude of potential harms to the states and their corporations if the
United States government refused to admit individuals from these countries. The
potential harms ranged from the economic harm of losing established employees
to the disruption to families and communities because of the sudden loss of people
who could not enter the United States” (Shmueli and Ahmad 2017, 29).
Public authority, and the interpretation and application of securitization
measures based on said authority, permeate Security. With control as the baseline
motive for securitization, the State propagates modalities of Security. To be secure
therefore involves the generation of mechanisms of control over internal and external
“threats” to Order, society, whereby the concepts of individuated and collective
selfhood (I and We) are maintained. Securitization that is overtly and explicitly
politicized to target enemies of the polity based on unassimilable Otherness—e.g.,
physical and cultural difference, religious and ideological difference, specific types
of alienage and foreignness—that views the Other as miasmic—stokes fear and
loathing, which, in turn, foments hate, anger, hostility, and violence (Polakow-Suransky
2017).
Three Executive orders proffered by President Trump pertaining to immigration
at the onset of his tenure in office reflect the power-dynamics that inform
expansive securitization regarding public safety, threat, and the prejudicial and
discriminatory politicizing of racial, ethnic, religious, and ideological identity. On
January 27, 2017, the President issued Executive Order 13769, Protecting the Nation
From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States. Citing the terrorist attacks
of September 11, 2001, and contending that “numerous foreign-born individuals
have been convicted or implicated in terrorism-related crimes” since then, the Executive
Order forcefully declared that, the United States “must ensure that those
admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding
principles” (Executive Order 13769). The Order was further justified because of
“[d]eteriorating conditions in certain countries due to war, strife, disaster, and civil
unrest increase the likelihood that terrorists will use any means possible to enter
the United States. The United States must be vigilant during the visa-issuance process
to ensure that those approved for admission do not intend to harm Americans
and that they have no ties to terrorism” (Executive Order 13769). In the act of
invoking a grave existential threat to the United States, the Executive has put forth
a hyper-expansive interpretation of Security that effectively emplaces immigration
in a national security framework. In securitizing immigration, we have a phenom-
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