Donald Trump urges racial profiling of Muslims and others in the US

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is now urging the US to institute criminal "profiling" of Muslims — and possibly others — who live in the country, say reports on 20 June.

It is "common sense" to consider all Muslims in the nation as potential criminals and to scrutinise them as such, indicated Trump in an interview on CBS programme Face the Nation.

"I think profiling is something that we're going to have to start thinking about as a country," he told CBS interviewer John Dickerson. "It's not the worst thing to do," he added.

"Other countries do it. You look at Israel and you look at others and they do it and they do it successfully. I hate the concept of profiling. But we have to start using common sense, and we have to use, you know, we have to use our heads ... we really have to look at profiling. We have to look at it seriously."

The position is a major expansion of Trump's proposed policy of barring all Muslims from entering the US. Following the deadly Orlando nightclub shooting, he appeared to extend his proposed ban to all immigrants that hailed from any nation with a history of terrorist activity.

Now, Trump appears to be singling out Muslims and others currently living in the US. Orlando shooter Omar Mateen was an American citizen born in the US to Afghan parents. He also reiterated in his Face the Nation interview that US mosques should be carefully watched, but told Dickerson it should be done "respectfully."

Trump also seemed to suggest that racial profiling should be used to screen people attending political rallies.

"People that obviously had no guns, no weapons, didn't know anything and they were going through screening and they were going through the same, the same, you know, scrutiny. The absolute same scrutiny as somebody else that looked like it could have been a possible person," he said, referring to screenings at campaign rallies. "So we really have to look at profiling."

Trump hinted at the use of profiling following the deadly San Bernardino shooting by terrorists Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik. He said then that such people should be investigated if neighbours or relatives have any suspicions about them.

In a campaign speech he blamed the mass shooting on the terror couple's neighbours' over concern with "political correctness" and fear of racial profiling for not reporting the two to police.

"Well, I think there can be profiling," he told Dickerson at the time. "If they thought there was something wrong with that group and they saw what was happening, and they didn't want to call the police because they didn't want to be profiling, I think that's pretty bad."

Trump also said that he is seeking to work out a plan with pro-gun lobby the National Rifle Association (NRA) that would ban people on the terrorist no-fly list from purchasing guns.

"We understand there are problems with that because some people are on the terror watch list that shouldn't be on," he said. "So I'm working with the NRA, we're discussing it and again the NRA has the best interests of our country, it just has the absolute best interests of our country."