Trump cited terrorism as the chief concern to his executive order, signed January 27th, which temporarily banned immigration to the U.S. from seven mostly-Muslim countries, and also disrupted the U.S. refugee program.
However, in a new report obtained by the AP, “analysts at the Homeland Security Department’s intelligence arm found insufficient evidence that citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries included in President Donald Trump’s travel ban pose a terror threat to the United States.” Concluding that “citizenship is an ‘unlikely indicator’ of terrorism threats to the United States and that few people from the countries Trump listed in his travel ban have carried out attacks or been involved in terrorism-related activities in the U.S. since Syria’s civil war started in 2011.”
As AP reports:
“The three-page report challenges Trump’s core claims. It said that of 82 people the government determined were inspired by a foreign terrorist group to carry out or try to carry out an attack in the United States, just over half were U.S. citizens born in the United States. The others were from 26 countries, led by Pakistan, Somalia, Bangladesh, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iraq and Uzbekistan. Of these, only Somalia and Iraq were among the seven nations included in the ban.
“Of the other five nations, one person each from Iran, Sudan and Yemen was also involved in those terrorism cases, but none from Syria. It did not say if any were Libyan.
“The report also found that terrorist organizations in Iran, Libya, Somalia and Sudan are regionally focused, while groups in Iraq, Syria and Yemen do pose a threat to the U.S.”
Of note: While Homeland Security spokeswoman Gillian Christensen does not dispute the report’s authenticity, she has indicated that it was not a final comprehensive review of the government’s intelligence.
