On Tuesday, January 16th, the Trump administration released a report concerning international terrorism. CNN reported the following, in regards to the report:
“73% of those convicted of 'international terrorism-related charges' in US federal courts following the attacks on September 11, 2001, were 'foreign-born,' attempting to draw a causal connection between hotly debated immigration policies disfavored by President Donald Trump and acts of terrorism.”
The report, released by the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, was initially supposed to be released coinciding with Trump's second executive order known as the 'Muslim Ban' in order to legitimize it but for some reason was delayed. Even the current release date of the report seems less than coincidental, as the Trump administration attempts to create immigration policy and prevent a government shutdown.
The conclusion is jarring, or as Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen called it, "chilling." However, the report comes to these conclusions through analysis and data collection that is questionable at best and purposely misleading at worst.
According to CNN:
“The Department of Homeland Security focused on 549 individuals convicted of offenses between September 11, 2001, and December 31, 2016. But it included terrorist acts committed abroad (though it didn't say exactly how many), doesn't provide a breakdown of how many individuals were arrested for acts committed on US soil and doesn't explain how many foreign nationals were radicalized only after entering the US.”
Essentially, the definition of the term 'foreigner' seems pretty ambiguous. The inclusion of acts committed abroad also simply does not make sense for a report blasted as being indicative of the United States relations with terrorism. But even more so, the report misses something important; it gives relevance to the nationality of the perpetrators rather than asking the far more important question of when and where these individuals were radicalized.
In an interview with Joshua Geltzer, the former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council, CNN also reported the following:
“'If we're letting in already-radicalized people,' then immigration policies 'might well be worth blaming,' Geltzer said. 'But it seems from what's publicly available that we're letting in totally normal people who qualify for our entry standards and who then in rare cases radicalize -- just as some US-born folks unfortunately do. This sets up a way to blame the immigration system for something it can't possibly do: address radicalization that can occur on our soil to US-born and non-US-born individuals alike.'”
As much as the Trump administration may want the solution, it isn’t completely restricting any form of immigration. It is becoming increasingly apparent that pertaining specifically to the United States, the perpetrators of terrorist activities are usually United States citizens, either first or second generation, which live in the United States for extended periods of time before becoming radicalized.
Omar Mateen, for example, whose shooting rampage at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida left 49 dead, was a US citizen. Fearmongering over these homegrown plotters that have been apprehended, while perhaps potentially somewhat dangerous at least in a few cases, have mostly been flaky or almost absurdly incompetent. The most current example of this is Akayed Ullah, the Manhattan explosion suspect. Why are we not addressing the much more pertinent question? The one that would actually be constructive of where and how (although very rarely), these individuals become radicalized.
The impact of a terrorist attack like 9/11 has created a sense of terrorism as a threat to a greater degree than it actually is. Speaking in terms of the number of attacks and number of deaths associated with terrorism following 9/11, this perceived threat is simply overblown.
