President-elect Donald Trump and a top adviser appeared to blame immigration for the New Year’s Eve massacre in New Orleans, linking ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ to one of his top political priorities.
Federal investigators said the suspect in the New Orleans attack, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who killed 14 people and left dozens injured was a Texas-born U.S. citizen and Army veteran.
Police fatally shot Jabbar after he rammed a truck carrying an ISIS flag into a crowd of New Year’s Eve revelers on Bourbon Street early Wednesday.
Deputy Assistant FBI Director Christopher Raia on Thursday said investigators believe Jabbar acted alone to execute a premeditated “act of terrorism” that was “100% inspired by ISIS,” referring to the Islamic State terrorist organization.
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As of mid-Thursday, federal investigators hadn’t drawn any links between the New Orleans terror suspect and the U.S.-Mexico border or immigration.
But in posts on his social network Truth Social in the wake of the attack, Trump linked the massacre to “criminals coming in” and drew links between “radical Islamic terrorism” and immigration.
President Joe Biden’s “open borders” policy, Trump said, “Radical Islamic Terrorism, and other forms of violent crime, will become so bad in America that it will become hard to even imagine or believe.”
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heinous acts committed by immigrants and occasionally spreading false information tying immigrants to disorder, all to boost his signature campaign promise: cracking down on illegal immigration.
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A mistaken news report
“It’s using tragedy and a serious problem to further his political agenda,” said Naureen Shah, an attorney at the ACLU. “He thinks vilifying immigrants is his blank check to cash, and in many ways he has been vindicated in his misuse of the facts.”
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Trump quickly blamed “the criminals coming in” before FOX corrected its reporting. The statement remained on Trump’s Truth Social homepage and on Trump transition Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s X account on Thursday.
“When I said that criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our own country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake New Media, but it turned out to be true,” Trump said in the statement.
New Orleans killer declared his support for ISIS
Raia, the deputy FBI director, said 42-year-old Jabbar drove from Houston, where he lived, to New Orleans on Tuesday, Dec. 31. Shortly before the attack, Jabbar posted five videos on an online platform “proclaiming his support for ISIS,” Raia said.
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Trump’s musings followed a post late Wednesday by aide Stephen Miller, his incoming deputy chief of staff for policy and Homeland Security adviser, drawing connections between “Islamist terrorism” and immigration.
“Islamist terrorism is an import,” Miller posted on X. “It is not ‘homegrown.’ It did not exist here before migration brought it here.”
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which bills itself as the country’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, denounced the violence in New Orleans.
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the New Orleans attack to advance a political agenda,” said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, CAIR national deputy director.
There are about 3 million Muslims of all ages in the U.S., accounting for about 1% of the U.S. population, according to estimates by Pew Research.
A majority of Muslim adults – 58% – are immigrants, a population that expanded after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act reduced restrictions on immigration from Asia, Africa and other regions outside Europe.
During his presidential campaign, Trump promised to “bring back the travel ban” that targeted Muslim-majority nations. The Supreme Court ultimately upheld a modified version of the ban, though Biden later ended the travel restrictions.
Joey Garrison and Kim Hjelmgaard contributed to this report.
