This story took a somewhat dim view of President Donald Trump’s travel ban and quoted Bensman in support.
Excerpted:
“Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow for the anti-immigration Center for Immigration Studies, said the Trump administration chose the countries to ban based on those nations’ inability to assist the U.S. with vetting.
In some cases that was because their intelligence leaders don’t have a good relationship with the U.S., while in other cases the countries simply lack the infrastructure and record-keeping to verify a person is who they say they are, Bensman said.
‘There’s a big disconnect between critics of the policy and homeland security people who came up with it,’ he told DailyMail.com. ‘If a country has no intelligence or policing capacity to help you vet a migrant or a potential entrant on the front end who applies for entry, then you’re at a disadvantage, you’re at a higher risk if you don’t have the ability to find out who that is.’
The challenge for the Trump administration is that it’s impossible to prove the ban has prevented a terrorist from entering the country and doing harm to Americans, he said, adding, ‘There’s no measure for something that doesn’t go boom.’
‘It’s just better to be safe than sorry,’ Bensman said. ‘It’s pre-emptive threat mitigation. It’s like parking an empty (police) patrol car at an intersection to make people slow down.’ “