Republican candidate Ted Cruz has demanded that President Obama reveal the immigration history of a list of people living in the US who have supposed terrorist links.
In a letter on 11 January - his third letter since August 2015 - addressed to top government officials, Mr Cruz said he wants the government to fill in a chart of the immigration background regarding a list of people who “seek to harm” the American public.
Mr Cruz insisted that of the 114 people identified, “at least” 14 of them were refugees.
“The resources spent every year investigating the countless number of immigrant terrorist suspects in the United States are astronomical,” the letter read. ”And yet, as this costly and dangerous status quo continues, the US continues to admit approximately 680,000 migrants from Muslim countries every five years. The American people are entitled to information on the immigration history of terrorists seeking to harm them.”
The letter does not point to the supposed cost in dealing with immigrant terrorism.
“A number of immigrant terrorists were even approved for citizenship. Others are the US-born children of foreign migrants whose presence in the country would not be possible but for the immigration of their parents,” he wrote.
The first letter, also signed by US Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, was sent in August and the second was sent in December, just days after a Muslim man and his wife attacked the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California.
It was sent to US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, US Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and US Secretary of State John Kerry.
The letter rallies against President Obama’s recent decision to loosen restrictions around immigration caps.
It does not point to any domestic acts of crime or terrorism committed by non-refugees or those that might have arisen due to the availability of guns.
An editorial for The New York Times in December responded to this debate by saying: “They [politicians] distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.”
