Donald Trump Won’t Rule out Warrantless Searches, Special ID’s for Muslims After Paris Attacks

Republican presidential candidate businessman Donald Trump speaks at a news conference before a scheduled campaign rally, Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2015, in Worcester, Mass. AP Photo/Steven Senne

Leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump says the United States might have to do things that would have previously been “unthinkable” following the terrorist attacks in Paris.

The attacks, which extremist Muslim group ISIS later took credit for, left 129 people dead and hundreds of others wounded.

Yahoo prompted Trump by asking, after he noted he has concerns about the Muslim community in America, whether his push for increased surveillance of American Muslims could include warrantless searches.

“We’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule,” Trump said.

“And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”

This undated image made available in the Islamic State's English-language magazine Dabiq, shows Belgian Abdelhamid Abaaoud, labeled as one of the terrorists behind the planning of the Paris attacks. He was killed during a police raid on November 18, 2015. Militant photo via AP

 

Yahoo then asked Trump whether he would consider registering Muslims in a database of making them carry a special form of identification that noted their religion, and he wouldn’t rule it out.

“We’re going to have to — we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump said when presented with the idea. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”

He admitted that the idea is “frankly unthinkable” but emphasized it might need to be done.

Trump’s comments came a few days after he was asked if he would follow new British proposals for battling extremism, including revoking passports of people who want to travel to fight with ISIS and closing mosques that support extremists.

“I would do that, absolutely, I think it’s great,” Trump said on Fox News.

Aly Kamel, an imam from the Bronx Muslim Center, holds a Quran before reading from it during a news conference in New York, Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2015. Kamel joined other religious and community leaders to denounce the terror attacks in Paris. AP Photo/Seth Wenig

 

When pressed about the potential legality of shutting down mosques, Trump added: “Well, I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, I haven’t heard about the closing of the mosque. It depends, if the mosque is, you know, loaded for bear, I don’t know. You’re going to have to certainly look at it.”

Trump in the new interview later slammed the students on college campuses calling for “safe spaces” to protect them from allegedly offensive commentary, noting his support for free speech.

“It’s gotten out of control. It’s all gotten out of control. … First of all, you’re really tampering with freedom of speech when you do that. At the same time, it’s trying to be politically correct and that is so bad,” Trump said.

“I think it’s one of the reasons I’m leading by so much in the polls, because we don’t have time to be so politically correct in this country and we have much bigger problems, as you can see.”