The Atlantic

Trump’s ‘Honor Killing’ Tracking System Could Exacerbate Domestic Violence

The president has ordered agencies to report “acts of gender-based violence against women … by foreign nationals." Advocates and mental-health practitioners are skeptical.
Source: David Ryder / Reuters

President Trump released a new executive order on immigration and refugees on Monday. Like the previous version of the order, it includes a number of new tracking requirements for the Department of Homeland Security. While the list of requirements mostly focuses on terrorism-related activities and major crimes, it also calls out one specific category of crime: “so-called ‘honor killings’” and “acts of gender-based violence against women … by foreign nationals.”

While this provision of the executive order concerns all “foreign nationals,” it seems to be focused on violence in Muslim communities. It targets immigrants from six Muslim-majority countries and affects a large portion of Muslims living in the U.S.: Pew Research Center that a little more than three-quarters of this group are either immigrants or the children of immigrants. “Honor killing” also seems to refer specifically to Muslims. The politically loaded term is

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