President-elect Donald Trump and a top adviser appeared to blame immigration for the New Year’s Eve massacre in New Orleans, linking ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ to one of his top political priorities.

Federal investigators said the suspect in the New Orleans attack, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who killed 14 people and left dozens injured was a Texas-born U.S. citizen and Army veteran.

Police fatally shot Jabbar after he rammed a truck carrying an ISIS flag into a crowd of New Year’s Eve revelers on Bourbon Street early Wednesday.

Deputy Assistant FBI Director Christopher Raia on Thursday said investigators believe Jabbar acted alone to execute a premeditated “act of terrorism” that was “100% inspired by ISIS,” referring to the Islamic State terrorist organization.

Trump Turns to Immigration

As of mid-Thursday, federal investigators hadn’t drawn any links between the New Orleans terror suspect and the U.S.-Mexico border or immigration.

But in posts on his social network Truth Social in the wake of the attack, Trump linked the massacre to “criminals coming in” and drew links between “radical Islamic terrorism” and immigration.

Blaming what he called President Joe Biden’s “open borders” policy, Trump said, “Radical Islamic Terrorism, and other forms of violent crime, will become so bad in America that it will become hard to even imagine or believe.”

“That time has come only worse than ever imagined,” he said.

The Trump transition team didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump has frequently blamed immigration for a perceived increase in crime, amplifying heinous acts committed by immigrants and occasionally spreading false information tying immigrants to disorder, all to boost his signature campaign promise: cracking down on illegal immigration.

A Mistaken News Report

“It’s using tragedy and a serious problem to further his political agenda,” said Naureen Shah, an attorney at the ACLU. “He thinks vilifying immigrants is his blank check to cash, and in many ways he has been vindicated in his misuse of the facts.”

The immigration narrative got an early boost after FOX News, citing anonymous sources, erroneously reported Wednesday that the New Orleans suspect may have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump quickly blamed “the criminals coming in” before FOX corrected its reporting. The statement remained on Trump’s Truth Social feed and on Trump transition Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s X account on Thursday.

“When I said that criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our own country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake New Media, but it turned out to be true,” Trump said in the statement.

New Orleans Killer Declared His Support for ISIS

Raia, of the FBI, said 42-year-old Jabbar drove from Houston, where he lived, to New Orleans on Tuesday, Dec. 31. Shortly before the attack, Jabbar posted five videos on an online platform “proclaiming his support for ISIS,” Raia said.

The extremist group known as ISIS peaked as a fighting force overseas about a decade ago. It grew out of Al Qaeda elements who fought an insurgency against U.S. forces in Iraq and later claimed it wanted to establish an Islamist caliphate across parts of the Middle East.

Trump’s musings followed a post late Wednesday by aide Stephen Miller, his incoming deputy chief of staff for policy and Homeland Security adviser, drawing connections between “Islamist terrorism” and immigration.

“Islamist terrorism is an import,” Miller posted on X. “It is not ‘homegrown.’ It did not exist here before migration brought it here.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which bills itself as the country’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, denounced the violence in New Orleans.

“We strongly denounce this crime, we stand in solidarity with the people of New Orleans, we encourage anyone with relevant information to come forward immediately, and we pray for a full recovery of those impacted by this crime,” the organization said in a statement.

Among the victims was Kareem Badawi, a Muslim American native of Baton Rouge and a student at the University of Alabama, CAIR said.

“No one should rush to use a horrific crime like the New Orleans attack to advance a political agenda,” said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, CAIR national deputy director.

There are about 3 million Muslims of all ages in the U.S., accounting for about 1% of the U.S. population, according to estimates by Pew Research.

A majority of Muslim adults – 58% – are immigrants, a population that expanded after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act reduced restrictions on immigration from Asia, Africa and other regions outside Europe.

During his presidential campaign, Trump promised to “bring back the travel ban” that targeted Muslim-majority nations. The Supreme Court ultimately upheld a modified version of the ban, though Biden later ended the travel restrictions.

Source: USA Today

Qatar’s Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs reported the news on Wednesday, explaining that the Umm Al-Mu’minin Khadijah Mosque in Malmo, expanding to 19,278 square feet  (1,791 square meters), will be able to accommodate up to 2,000 worshipers. Breitbart News noted that Qatar is an absolute monarchy largely ruled by Sharia law, and has been accused by U.S. officials of funding radical Islamic terrorism.

“We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to [Islamic State] and other radical Sunni groups in the region,” an email by former U.S. Secretary of State and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton acknowledged in 2014, as released by WikiLeaks in 2016.

Atheism has also been rising in Sweden, with a 2014 national study noting that nearly eight out of 10 Swedes are either “not religious” or “convinced atheists,” making the nation one of the least religious countries in the Western world.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden admitted in February that people are leaving the faith in record numbers, with the 90,000 people who left the Church in 2016 being almost double the number of those who quit in 2015.The Swedish Church used pollsters Norstat to conduct the survey, which found that 40 percent of respondents made the decision to leave the Church because they “no longer believe in God,” which was the most popular reason given. Some, such as Monsignor Carlo Liberati, a Roman Catholic archbishop, have warned that there is a link in the rise of atheism and the rise of Islam in Europe.

Speaking on the rise of the Muslim population in Italy, which went from 2,000 in 1970 to 2 million in 2016, Liberati admitted that the Church is not doing a good job in bringing and keeping people in the Christian faith. “Parishes are the only thing still standing. We need a true Christian life. All this paves the way to Islam. In addition to this, they have children and we do not. We are in full decline,” he warned.

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