The political and media elite erupted again this week when President Trump stated that, if reelected, he would “absolutely revoke citizenship from naturalized criminals” and take strong measures to protect Americans from violent offenders who entered under our increasingly broken immigration system. He reminded audiences that he has the authority to do so, and that protecting the American people is not only legitimate — it is the first responsibility of the commander in chief. The statement immediately reignited the debate over immigration from radicalized regions and the now-infamous “Muslim Ban.”

The truth is that the “Muslim Ban” was never a Muslim ban. Critics shouted the phrase loudly and often enough that many Americans never learned what the policy actually did. The original executive order did not prohibit Muslims from entering the United States. It restricted travel and refugee entry from seven countries racked by civil war, controlled by terror networks, or lacking reliable identity-verification systems. Those countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen — were identified not because they were Muslim, but because they were unstable, violent, or compromised states. In other words, the ban was targeted at the highest-risk points of entry, where terrorism was statistically the most concentrated and where vetting was impossible. That’s not bigotry; that’s basic national security.

And given what we know today, it was one of the most responsible foreign-policy decisions made in the last quarter-century.

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