A DOJ official tried to defend its flawed study linking immigration and terrorism. It was a disaster

AARON RUPAR at Think Progress

https://thinkprogress.org/doj-immigration-terrorism-ed-o-callaghan-6f201970ac93/

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During a White House news briefing on Wednesday, Ed O’Callaghan, principal deputy assistant attorney general, struggled to defend a misleading Department of Justice report that claims three out of four individuals convicted in recent years of international terrorism or terrorism-related offenses were “immigrants.”

As ThinkProgress detailed on Tuesday, there are a number of problems with the report — including its reliance on a broad definition of “immigrant” that includes people extradited to the U.S. for trial. In other words, a person who plotted or committed a violent act abroad and came to the U.S. only to face trial could be considered an “immigrant” under the DOJ’s criteria.

On Wednesday, O’Callaghan was pressed about that issue — and had no good answers.

“You talked about the immigration system and reforming the immigration system to defend Americans in the United States, but a lot of the crimes that you’re using as examples to justify changing the immigration system are crimes that were attempted or would have taken place outside the United States — people wanting to travel outside the United States to fight, providing support for fighters outside the United States,” a reporter said to O’Callaghan. “And I understand there’s a nexus there with U.S. forces in those regions, but if the point is to reform the immigration system to protect Americans, can you provide more information, more statistics that show doing so would have prevented people from coming in that committed more crimes inside the United States?”

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