The Psychological Trick Behind Trump's Misleading Terror Statistics
Terrorism by foreign-born individuals is rarer than the administration is leading Americans to believe.
By LEAF VAN BOVEN and PAUL SLOVIC January 28, 2018
On January 16, President Donald Trump tweeted a summary of a government report showing that “nearly 3 in 4 individuals convicted of terrorism-related charges are foreign born.” The report, issued by the departments of Justice and Homeland Security, noted that between September 11, 2001, and December 31, 2016, of the 549 people convicted of international terrorism-related charges in U.S. federal courts, 402 were foreign born.
The White House fact sheet accompanying the report concluded: “TIME TO END CHAIN MIGRATION AND THE VISA LOTTERY: This report shows, once again, that our current immigration system jeopardizes our national security.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions struck a similar chord, declaring that “our immigration system has undermined our national security and public safety,” and that “we currently have terrorism-related investigations against thousands of people in the United States, including hundreds of people who came here as refugees.”
Yet using the “nearly 3 in 4” statistic to imply that the U.S. immigration system increases terrorist threats is a deeply misleading tactic. It exploits a psychological challenge that most of us face in reasoning about risk—with potentially disastrous consequences, especially as immigration policies are being debated and lives hang in the balance.
Criticism of the report so far has focused on the specific numbers cited. For example, the report does not include domestic terrorists, who are less likely to be foreign born. The report also concerns terrorism-related convictions—activities such as perjury and petty theft that are often tenuously connected to terrorist attacks themselves. Plus, the report includes foreign-born individuals extradited from other countries for prosecution in the United States. All of which suggests the “nearly 3 in 4” statistic is inflated.
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https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/28/trump-administration-terror-statistics-216541?lo=ap_e1
