The majority of Americans believe that national security was the prime motivation behind President Donald Trump’s travel ban that temporarily restricts travelers from Muslim-majority countries from coming to the U.S., according to a poll conducted by the Associated Press and the University of Chicago’s NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Of the 1,068 adults polled, six out 10 agreed the intent or motivation behind the travel ban was to protect the country. Half of those polled also agreed that preventing Muslims from coming to the United States was a major goal of the executive order Trump signed during his first days in office. Additionally, a majority of Americans support several courts’ challenges to the travel ban’s constitutionality.
The poll also showed that people’s views strongly aligned with their political affiliation: 87 percent of Republicans believed the executive order is about national security compared to just 41 percent of Democrats. Democrats, 64 percent, were also more likely to believe the travel ban was Islamophobic, in that it aimed to bar Muslims from entering the country. Only 34 percent of Republicans agreed. Moreover, Republicans and Democrats were at odds regarding the legal challenges to the travel ban, with 73 percent of Republicans against and 82 percent of Democrats in favor.
Terrorism experts have previously said Trump’s travel and immigration bans won’t make the country safer, and could make threats worse. Since September 11, no one has been killed in a terrorist attack by immigrants from the countries included in the ban — Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen, the New York Times reported. (Iraq was removed from the list of targeted countries in the second iteration of Trump’s ban.) Additionally, fewer than one in four Muslim Americans charged with terrorism related activities had family in those countries.
There’s also concern the ban, which has been criticized as un-American, could make Americans less safe and increase the Islamic State’s reach by playing into their recruitment propaganda. Former jihadi Abu Abdullah told CNN that such policies can “play into their propaganda, to make it clear for anyone who could be in doubt, that it’s a war on Islam and all Muslims.”
National security as it pertains to terrorism has increasingly become an issue worldwide. According to a report from the Unisys Security Index, war and terrorism are the top concerns for consumers. The IT group surveyed 13,000 individuals across 13 countries and found that 68 percent were “extremely” or “very concerned” about terrorism — a 44 percent jump from 2014. Concern over hacking also jumped with 56 percent of Americans ranking it as a serious concern. Barely a third of respondents felt that way in 2014.
The survey and poll results follow a major global hack that affected more than 100 countries and has now been linked to North Korea, and several attacks in the U.K. Anti-Muslim hate crimes have increased as a result.