Editor’s Notice: Peter Bergen is CNN’s nationwide safety analyst, a vice chairman at New America, a professor of follow at Arizona State College and the host of the Audible podcast “In the Room” additionally on Apple and Spotify. He’s the writer of “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden.” The views expressed on this commentary are his personal. Learn extra opinion at CNN.
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Over the weekend, former President Donald Trump spoke out on his Reality Social platform about the southern border, claiming, “TERRORISTS ARE POURING IN, UNCHECKED, FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD. There may be now a 100% likelihood that there shall be MAJOR TERROR ATTACKS IN THE USA. CLOSE THE BORDER!”
Trump is already on the whole election mode and he is aware of that the southern border is a weak spot for President Joe Biden. Trump additionally absolutely recollects that conflating terrorism and immigration was a winner for him again within the 2016 presidential race — keep in mind the “Muslim ban”? So why not return to this electorally confirmed properly once more?
However is Trump proper? Let’s take his first declare, that terrorists are pouring into the US from all around the globe. If this have been true, wouldn’t that be form of an enormous information story? When terrorists get arrested anyplace within the US, the media covers such tales intensively, as it did in the case of an Uzbek man sentenced to life in prison final 12 months for his function in a terrorist assault in Manhattan that killed eight folks.
Surprisingly, we aren’t listening to tales of terror assaults throughout the US by individuals who infiltrated the southern border. It should be the lamestream media masking up for the terrorists!
In reality, what Trump seems to be referring to are US Customs and Border Safety statistics about encounters with people at US borders who’re on the US terrorism watch record. To be clear, being on this terrorism watchlist doesn’t imply you’re a terrorist.
Based on a CBS Information investigation final 12 months, there are actually some 2 million people on the terrorism watch list, which merely implies that the federal government, for causes that it gained’t disclose, suspects somebody might have some unspecified hyperlink to terrorism.
In fiscal 12 months 2023, there have been 249 encounters with people on the US terrorism watch list on the southern border by Border Patrol brokers, whereas nearly double the variety of such encounters — a complete of 487 — occurred on the US border with Canada. But nobody is looking to construct a wall throughout the Canadian border due to issues that terrorists are pouring in throughout America’s northern border.
Certainly, the final time a bona fide terrorist was arrested at any US land border was in 1999; Ahmed Ressam had a trunk full of explosives in his automobile and was heading to LAX Airport to explode a bomb there. He was arrested on the Port Angeles, Washington, border crossing driving from Canada.
The scaremongering about terrorists pouring throughout the southern border additionally misstates the place the terrorist risk within the US largely emanates from. Since 9/11, there has solely been one lethal terrorist attack in the US by a international nationwide with ties to a terrorist group: In 2019, a Saudi navy officer who had been speaking with an al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen killed three US sailors on the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida. This Saudi officer had not crossed the harmful Darien Hole in Panama after which traveled all the best way throughout Mexico to cross the southern border; he had arrived legally within the US two years earlier.
The overwhelming majority of terrorist assaults carried out within the US since 9/11 have been carried out by US residents or everlasting residents, none of whom needed to cross the southern border as a result of they have been already within the US. Typical of this cohort is Omar Mateen, who, impressed by ISIS, killed 49 folks at a Florida nightclub in 2016. Mateen, a US citizen, was born in Queens, New York.
The most important terrorist risk within the US lately has not been from jihadist terrorists like Mateen however from extremist right-wing terrorists motivated by racial or ethnic hatred or anti-government sentiments, in line with a US Government Accountability Office report final 12 months. These terrorists are US residents, not immigrants.
In 2019, in probably the most deadly right-wing terrorist assault in many years, a 21-year-old White man shot and killed 23 folks he thought have been Hispanic immigrants at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. In a manifesto the terrorist posted online, he referred to what he referred to as a “Hispanic invasion” as his rationale for the killings, echoing Trump’s own rhetoric about an immigrant invasion coming throughout the southern border.
Probably the most unsettling act of home terrorism in many years was the January 6, 2021, riot on the US Capitol, wherein some 140 cops have been assaulted, in line with the US Division of Justice. Since then, greater than 1,200 folks have been charged with federal crimes, starting from comparatively minor offenses like trespassing to extra severe fees reminiscent of assaulting police officers. Round 900 of those folks have pleaded responsible or been convicted of fees, in line with an analysis by the Associated Press.
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The rioters on the US Capitol have been amongst Trump’s supporters who had responded to his invitation to return to Washington, and he then directed his rally goers to march to the Capitol, understanding a few of them have been armed. Trump watched TV coverage of the riot passively for hours earlier than intervening to attempt to cease the mayhem.
Final 12 months, Trump stated the riot he helped to instigate on the US Capitol was a “stunning day” in a city corridor with CNN when, the truth is, it was one of many sorriest episodes within the historical past of the republic. If he’s elected president once more, Trump has promised to pardon a “large portion” of the rioters.
In terms of acts of terrorism, it’d behoove Trump to take a cautious look within the mirror as a substitute of misdirecting consideration to the southern border.
