By Natalia Castro

Mufid Elfgeeh entered the United States as a family member of naturalized citizens from Yemen and became a citizen himself through naturalization. He lived what many would consider a normal life in the U.S. for nearly 20 years, except for one discovery by the FBI; in 2016, after living in the U.S. since 1997, Elfgeeh was convicted to more than 22 years of prison for recruiting fighters to Islamic State.

Elfgeeh even attempted to send Americans to Syria to join the fight alongside Islamic State while also inspiring and encouraging others to pledge allegiance to the terrorist organization and commit violent acts of jihad. According to a recent Department of Justice (DOJ) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report, this is a part of the environment our immigration system is fostering.

In the comprehensive report the DOJ released in January 2018 pursuant to President Trump’s Executive Order 13780: Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, the DOJ and DHS confirmed that a majority of dangerous terrorist activity comes from outside entry into the country.

Between September 11, 2001 and December 31, 2016, the DOJ convicted 549 individuals of international terrorism-related charges in U.S. federal courts. Of these, 73 percent were foreign born. These 402 individuals entered the U.S. with the hopes of committing a crime against our country and killing Americans, and nearly 40 percent of these people became U.S. citizens in the process before they were caught.

As the murder of Kate Steinle showed, illegal immigration too has had a disproportionate impact on women living in the United States. A California jury ruled Steilne’s death, the result of a ricochet bullet shot by an illegal immigrant was an accident.

Overall, violence against women is a major crime being perpetrated by foreign nationals.The DOJ report concludes, 91 percent of victims of honor killings, killings against women who are perceived as having brought dishonor to their family, in North American were murdered for being “too westernized”. More data is needed to confirm how many of these crimes were committed by foreign nationals, which both departments promised to follow up with.

Since 1990, the risk of undergoing Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) has become three times as great. The DOJ cited a 2016 Center for Disease Control study which concluded the estimated increase “was wholly a result of rapid growth in the number of immigrants from FGM/C-practicing countries living in the United States.”

The DOJ report also tells the story of Abdurasaul Hasanovich Juraboev, who entered the United States through the visa lottery program and plead guilty to conspiring to support Islamic State. Juraboev encouraged the killing of President Obama on Uzbek-language websites as an act of martyrdom on behalf of Islamic State. Yet the policies of President Obama allowed him to enter the country and remain undetected for 4 years before his imprisonment.

President Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen warned that based on current reports, it is clear our open-ended immigration system poses a significant risk to our national security.

Luckily, this report was released for exactly this reason; because the goal of the Trump Administration is to make America safe again, and that cannot be done without finding each hole the previous administrations left uncovered.

Natalia Castro is a contributing editor at Americans for Limited Government.