WASHINGTON: Three out of every four individuals convicted of international terrorism-related charges in US federal courts between Sept 11, 2001 and Dec 31, 2016 were foreign-born, says an official report.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who presented the report before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, said the United States should “continually vet” some legal residents to prevent future terrorist attacks.

The report “tells us we need to continually vet those who are here,” she said. “We need to be able to continue up until the point they become a US citizen, to continue to vet them to ensure they haven’t become radicalised.”

Secretary Nielsen said she would work with Congress to “close the loopholes that prevent us from removing known, suspected terrorists and other criminals in the United States”.

The US media are interpreting her remarks as an indicator of more drastic actions against immigrants, including those already settled in the country, including large-scale deportations.

The report by the US Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shows that at least 549 individuals were convicted of international terrorism-related charges in US federal courts during this period and 402 of them were foreign-born. An analysis conducted by the DHS shows that 254 were not US citizens; 148 were foreign-born, naturalised and received US citizenship; and 47 were US citizens by birth.

Over the same period, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed approximately 1,716 aliens with national security concerns.

In 2017 alone the DHS had 2,554 encounters with individuals on the terrorist watch list (also known as the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database) traveling to the United States.

The Trump administration has already tightened immigration and visa procedures and has banned individuals from certain countries from coming to the United States. President Donald Trump has repeatedly asked for further tightening the immigration and visa systems. He wants to abolish lottery visas and end chain migration.

This report was required by President Trump’s recent executive order that raised the baseline for the vetting and screening of foreign nationals to prevent the entry of alleged “malicious actors” from entering the country.

The report claimed that the information released on Tuesday was “only the tip of the iceberg” as the two departments currently have terrorism-related investigations against thousands of people in the United States, including hundreds of people who came here as refugees.

Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2018