Well, this is embarrassing… Like almost everything that comes out of President Donald Trump’s White House reign, this too will go on to be a major source of embarrassment for Trump’s administration.
Intelligence analysts at the Department of Homeland Security sent out a memo that contradicts the White House’s earlier terror threat risk assessment from the seven countries listed in the travel ban executive order that Trump signed in late January.
According to the memo, obtained by the Chicago Tribune, the analysts concluded that citizenship is an “unlikely indicator” of terrorism threats to the United States.
Further adding to the embarrassment, and we hate to say we told you so, the memo also notes that few people from the countries listed in the travel ban have carried out attacks or been involved in terrorism-related activities in the United States since Syria’s civil war started back in 2011.
Yeah… that’s what we tried to say, but they called us fake news.
So far no one from Trump’s core administration team has officially commented on the memo.
Trump came under fire for his travel ban when critics commented on the fact that the countries listed have a Muslim-majority population. Many media outlets called the ban a “Muslim Ban” and condemned the executive order for being racially and religiously motivated.
Trump’s administration was quick to point out that terrorism was the main motivator behind the ban, with many right-wing pundits claiming that these were the same countries that Obama’s administration singled out as being possibly terror-laden.
Homeland Security spokeswoman Gillian Christensen commented on the document but did not dispute its authenticity. However, she stated that it’s an incomplete view of the intelligence the department had on the countries in question:
“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 interagency sourcing. The … report does not include data from other intelligence community sources. It is incomplete.”
The three-page report may not be complete, but it does challenge Trump’s core claims about his travel ban. Namely, the document stated that of the 82 people the government determined were inspired by a foreign terrorist group to carry out or try to carry out an attack against the United States, just over half were U.S. citizens born in the United States.
The document went on to say that the remaining persons of interest were from 26 countries led by Pakistan, Bangladesh, Cuba, Somalia, Ethiopia, Iraq, and Uzbekistan.
The only countries from this list included in Trump’s ban are Somalia and Iraq.
Of the other five nations listed in the ban, only one person from each country was involved in those terrorism cases flagged by the U.S. government and not one was from Syria.
It’s not a shocker that Trump’s people would ignore this information and make up their own alternative facts to justify their inherently racist agenda, but it is disheartening. This is not the way a country like America should be led.
Featured image is a graphic created by the author
