Leading Republican presidential hoopeful Donald Trump has created a controversy by saying he “would certainly implement” a database system tracking Muslims in the US to protect the country against ter
Leading Republican presidential hoopeful Donald Trump has created a controversy by saying he “would certainly implement” a database system tracking Muslims in the US to protect the country against terrorism.
“I would certainly implement that. Absolutely,” Mr Trump told NBC News on Thursday. “There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases,” he added.
“We’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely. We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully,” Mr Trump told Yahoo News.
Mr Trump said he believes the war on terror will require unprecedented surveillance of America’s Muslims.
“We’re going to have to do thing that we never did before. Some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule,” he said when asked whether increased surveillance of American-Muslims could include warrantless searches. “Certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. We’re going to have to do things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago,” Mr Trump said.
Democratic national committee chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz said, “Donald Trump’s openness to special identifications and a database for Muslim-Americans is beyond shameful, embodies the exclusionary culture of today’s Republican party, and is a dangerous mindset our greatest generation fought and died to defeat seven decades ago.”
