It’s Not Foreigners Who are Plotting Here: What the Data Really Show

[GMDino]

https://lawfareblog.com/its-not-foreigners-who-are-plotting-here-what-data-really-show

Quote:All of of the data I’m going to cite come from official Justice Department documents that have been made publically available by the department. I began assembling them with a review of the National Security Division’s press releases, available here, and I tracked all counterterrorism subjects arrested or charged since January 1, 2015. When determining a subject’s immigration or citizenship status, I used the criminal complaint or indictment. At times, I had to review additional court documents to determine the details of a plot or a subject’s background. But all data here come from the official court docket; to the extent I rely on any outside sources, I explicitly refer to those outside sources explicitly below.


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Let’s put these numbers in perspective.



In the past two years, the FBI has arrested five subjects, all American citizens, from Ohio alone. Three of them—Christopher Lee Cornell, Munir Abdulkader, Terrence J. McNeil—actively plotted attacks in the United States. Cornell planned an attack on the U.S. Capitol, while Abdulkader and McNeil targeted police stations and U.S. military personnel closer to home.



During the same time period, the FBI arrested nine subjects from Virginia, all U.S. citizens.



Since January 2015, the FBI has also arrested more anti-immigrant American citizens plotting violent attacks on Muslims within the U.S. than it has refugees, or former refugees, from any banned country. As we wrote about here, here and here, in October 2016, three white men from Kansas were charged with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction. According to the graphic complaint, the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant men planned to attack a mosque in the area. The men progressed quickly with their plot, amassing firearms and explosives. The targets were people from Somalia, who ironically, would now be covered by Trump’s order.



And finally during the two years of arrests I studied, the FBI arrested six U.S. citizens en route to Istanbul, who planned to travel on to Syria to join ISIL. In other words, there are more U.S. citizens arrested while leaving the United States to commit mayhem abroad, transiting through Istanbul alone, than there are refugees trying to sneak into the country to perpetrate violence here.