Sessions: More Than 570 Charged, Convicted or Connected to Terror Since 9/11; Almost All Muslims

Sen. Jeff Sessions warned Sunday that more attacks like the one on an Orlando nightclub were likely, and disclosed that more than 570 people have been “convicted or charged or connected to terrorism” since 9/11.

The Alabama Republican, who chairs the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on immigration and the national interest, told Fox News Sunday that data it had obtained so far indicated that “about two-thirds of those people that were charged were foreign born, almost all Islamic individuals.”

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Sessions and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)–who chairs another Judiciary subcommittee–have been seeking immigration status and family immigration status data from the federal government as they compile information on individuals charged or convicted of terror-related offenses.

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The senators asked the departments to add immigration history data to a chart on the 113 individuals, all of whom were identified between March 2014 and January 2016 as having terror associations.

Of the 113, more than 80 are affiliated with ISIS, according to the data. Other affiliations include al-Qaeda affiliates including Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula, Al-Shabaab and Ansar al-Shari’a; groups that have pledged allegiance to ISIS, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Ansar al-Islam; and Hezbollah.

Sessions has long raised concern about the large numbers of immigrants to the U.S. from Islamic nations.

Last April, he noted that considerably more immigrants from Muslim-majority nations (about 680,000) had been given green cards over the five-year period from FY 2009-FY 2013 than immigrants from European Union nations (about 270,000).

Since then, the Department of Homeland Security has released its annual Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, covering FY 2014.

According to the latest yearbook, the U.S. issued green cards during FY 2014 to another 148,736 migrants from 46 Muslim-majority nations–a 26.7 percent increase from 117,336 in FY 2013.

That takes to 831,221 the number of migrants from Muslim-majority countries who have received green cards between FY 2009 and FY 2014–compared to 322,882 from European Union countries.

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