Trump Links New Orleans Attack to Immigration Policy, Signals Hardline Stance
President-elect Donald Trump has sought to connect the New Orleans New Year’s Day terrorist attack to his tough stance on immigration, Bloomberg reports.
This comes just weeks before he is set to retake the White House.
“With the Biden ‘Open Border’s Policy’ I said, many times during Rallies, and elsewhere, that 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. That time has come, only worse than ever imagined,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday.
Trump alleged that the perpetrator of the New Orleans attack was a foreign-born individual who had crossed the border from Mexico. Investigators have identified the suspect as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a US citizen and Army veteran who was likely radicalized by the terrorist group ISIS. Authorities discovered an ISIS flag in the Ford pickup truck Jabbar used to drive through the crowd, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens more.
Trump has pledged a large-scale overhaul of US immigration policy, promising to begin deporting scores of undocumented migrants when he takes office on January 20. During his first term, Trump’s administration implemented a travel ban targeting mostly Muslim countries.
Stephen Miller, one of the architects of that initial policy, has been tapped to serve as a deputy chief of staff for policy in Trump’s second administration. Miller echoed Trump’s sentiments, linking terrorism and immigration.
Mike Waltz, Trump’s pick for national security advisor, stated on Fox News that he has been in contact with Jake Sullivan, his counterpart in the Biden administration, but asserted that information provided by federal authorities alone was insufficient. He also stressed the importance of swift confirmation for Trump’s national security appointees.
Tom Homan, whom Trump has named as his administration’s “border czar,” has pledged to rapidly implement plans to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, focusing first on those who have committed crimes. Homan has also suggested using family detention centers for undocumented individuals and ending the practice of allowing migrants to be free from detention while awaiting court proceedings.
Homan, who played a key role in designing the controversial family separation policy for migrants during Trump’s first term, has stated that undocumented parents who have children who are US citizens will have to choose between taking their children with them or leaving them behind with a relative in the US.
