Neutral-seeming security policy can encode religious exclusion in practice.

Evidence

In January 2017 he implemented a travel ban that blocked entry into the United States for seven countries characterized as high-risk for terrorism. Critics were quick to note that all seven countries also happened to be Muslim-majority nations, and thus the indirect function of the travel ban was to bar Muslim entry to the United States. The Presidential Order also stipulated that religious minorities in these countries would receive special refugee priority – which essentially permitted refugee status for non-Muslim (i.e., Christian) residents from the seven countries. — Emily Greene-Colozzi, Amy Adamczyk, and Senahan Kiyal Keles, Differences in Religious Framing of…, 16

Categorization

• SEED: An essay on ‘secular’ policy language as a laundering mechanism for religious preference — how the refugee-priority carve-out quietly names the intended in-group.
• FICTION: A story where a bureaucratic clause — one line about ‘religious minorities’ — is the whole plot, revealing a nation’s real sorting logic.