DHS intelligence report finds insufficient grounds for Trump travel ban

A Department of Homeland Security intelligence report prepared in response to a White House request has concluded that the country of origin is not a reliable indicator of terrorist activity. However, the report contradicts the White House’s position on immigration from seven countries which White House officials believe is a threat to the security of the United States. President Trump’s travel ban came in the form of an executive order in January which was intended to temporarily halt immigration from seven Muslim majority countries, but the order was stayed by the ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals early February. Trump’s administration has maintained that the 90-day travel ban on seven predominantly Muslim countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen) is not a Muslim ban, but rather based on security factors. A senior White House administration official on Friday rejected the DHS report, calling it politically motivated and poorly researched, reports the Wall Street Journal. He told the Wall Street Journal: “This is not the intelligence assessment the president asked for.” The report, which is described as incomplete by Gillian M. Christensen, the DHS’s own acting press secretary, is based on public sources and is not “an official, robust document with thorough interagency sourcing.” The report itself states that it is based on unclassified information and publicly available data mostly from the State Department and the Department of Justice. Christensen also maintained that DHS assessments are not politically motivated and that this report is not the final word in the assessment. Nevertheless, the available data compiled by DHS analysts indicates that only two of the seven countries on the travel ban are among the top origin countries for foreign-born individuals. The top country is Pakistan, followed by Somalia, Bangladesh, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iraq, and Uzbekistan, in that order. Another key finding on the report was that only terrorist groups in three out of the seven countries (Iraq, Syria, and Yemen) pose a threat to the US while those from the four other countries are regionally focused.