Thursday, December 01, 2016
BY ADAM EDELMAN
President-elect Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday that the Somali-born Ohio State student who rammed his car into a crowd before attacking them with a butcher knife "should not have been in our country."
The Islamic State's news agency took responsibility for the Monday attack by Abdul Razak Ali Artan that left 11 injured — a claim Trump seized on to repeat his desire to ban immigrants from predominantly Muslim nations.
"ISIS is taking credit for the terrible stabbing attack at Ohio State University by a Somali refugee who should not have been in our country," Trump tweeted Wednesday.
During his campaign, Trump first proposed a complete immigration ban for all Muslims, and later tweaked the proposal, calling for suspension of immigration from "terror-prone" regions where extreme vetting measures are not possible.
National security experts have largely said such proposals would not at all help combat terrorism, especially homegrown terrorists, and could even help recruiting efforts by groups like ISIS.
"Is this opportunistic jihad something that can be walled out? No. Is it something that can be stopped by suspending entry from countries with terror issues? No, because the terror model has been shifting away from jihadist importation to recruiting from within via guidance from a booming online jihadi community," Bridget Johnson, a fellow with the Haym Salomon Center, a public policy center, wrote for the Daily News this week.
"We need collaboration with the domestic Muslim community and Muslim nations, a comprehensive counterterrorism plan not just focused on ISIS, smart counter-messaging, and interdiction from the home level to law enforcement to catch those warning signs," she wrote.
Artan was born in Somalia and was a legal permanent U.S. resident, according to a U.S. official. He came to the U.S. in 2014 as the child of a refugee.