Homeland Security report questions “terrorism” argument for visa ban on citizens from 7 mainly-Muslim countries
The US Department of Homeland Security has found insufficient evidence to support a key argument for Donald Trump’s Muslim Ban.
A draft document concludes that citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries covered by the ban pose no terror threat to the United States. It says that citizenship is an “unlikely indicator” of threat to the United States and that few people from the seven countries Trump listed have carried out attacks or been involved in terrorism-related activities in the US since Syria’s civil war started in 2011.
A Circuit Court suspended the ban in late January. Trump said Friday a new verison will be announced soon.
Homeland Security spokeswoman Gillian Christensen played down the report:
While DHS was asked to draft a comprehensive report on this issue, the document you’re referencing was commentary from a single intelligence source versus an official, robust document with thorough inter-agency sourcing. The…report does not include data from other intelligence community sources. It is incomplete.
The Homeland Security report is based on unclassified information from the Justice Department, State Department visa statistics, the 2016 Worldwide Threat Assessment from the US intelligence community, and the State Department Country Reports on Terrorism 2015.
The investigation found that, of 82 people the US Government determined were inspired by a foreign terrorist group to carry out or try to carry out an attack, just over half were US 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 were involved in those terrorism cases, but none from Syria. The report did not say if any were Libyan.
The report was prepared as part of an internal review Trump requested after his executive order was blocked by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals.