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Undocumented immigration and terrorism: Is there a connection?

ABSTRACT: Unauthorized immigration, already a divisive and controversial subject in American society, was reframed as a grave national security threat after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Yet, despite substantial public, political and policy attention to the issue of undocumented immigration and terrorism, there has been relatively little empirical assessment of the relationship between unauthorized immigration flows and terrorist activity. We attempt to fill this gap by combining newly developed estimates of the unauthorized population, a novel use of sentencing and prosecutorial data to measure terrorism-related activity, and multiple data sources on the criminological, socioeconomic, and demographic context from all 50 states from 1990 to 2014. We then leverage this unique dataset to examine the longitudinal, macro-level relationship between undocumented immigration and various measures of terrorism. Results from fixed effects negative binomial models suggest that increased undocumented immigration over this period is not associated with terrorist attacks, radicalization, or terrorism prosecutions.

SUBMITTER: Light MT

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7926034 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Undocumented immigration and terrorism: Is there a connection?

Light Michael T MT Thomas Julia T JT

Social science research 20201209

Unauthorized immigration, already a divisive and controversial subject in American society, was reframed as a grave national security threat after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Yet, despite substantial public, political and policy attention to the issue of undocumented immigration and terrorism, there has been relatively little empirical assessment of the relationship between unauthorized immigration flows and terrorist activity. We attempt to fill this gap by combining newly develope ...[more]

PMID: 33648683

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Project description:At present, a large number of people worldwide have been infected by coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19). When the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic begins in a country, its impact is disastrous to both the country and its neighbors. In early 2020, the spread of COVID-19 was associated with global aviation. More recently, COVID-19 infections due to illegal or undocumented immigration have played a significant role in spreading the disease in Southeast Asia countries. Therefore, the spread of COVID-19 of all countries' border should be curbed. Many countries closed their borders to all nations, causing an unprecedented decline in global travel, especially cross-border travel. This restriction affects social and economic trade-offs. Therefore, immigration policies are essential to control the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand and simulate the spread of the disease under different immigration conditions, we developed a novel mathematical model called the Legal immigration and Undocumented immigration from natural borders for Susceptible-Infected-Hospitalized and Recovered people (LUSIHR). The purpose of the model was to simulate the number of infected people under various policies, including uncontrolled, fully controlled, and partially controlled countries. The infection rate was parameterized using the collected data from the Department of Disease Control, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand. We demonstrated that the model possesses nonnegative solutions for favorable initial conditions. The analysis of numerical experiments showed that we could control the virus spread and maintain the number of infected people by increasing the control rate of undocumented immigration across the unprotected natural borders. Next, the obtained parameters were used to visualize the effect of the control rate on immigration at the natural border. Overall, the model was well-suited to explaining and building the simulation. The parameters were used to simulate the trends in the number of people infected from COVID-19.

Project description:BackgroundThe Global Terrorism Database (GTD) is an open-source database on terrorist incidents around the world since 1970, and it is maintained by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START; College Park, Maryland USA), a US Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence. The consortium reviews media reports to determine if an event meets eligibility to be categorized as a terrorism incident for entry into the database.ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to characterize chemical terrorism incidents reported to the GTD and understand more about the kinds of chemical agents used, the associated morbidity and mortality, the geography of incidents, and the intended targets.MethodsChemical terrorism incidents from 1970 through 2015 were analyzed by chemical agent category, injury and fatality, geographic region, and target.ResultsDuring the study period, 156,772 terrorism incidents were reported to the GTD, of which 292 (0.19%) met the inclusion criteria for analysis as a chemical terrorism incident. The reported chemical agent categories were: unknown chemical (30.5%); corrosives (23.3%); tear gas/mace (12.3%); unspecified gas (11.6%); cyanide (8.2%); pesticides (5.5%); metals (6.5%); and nerve gas (2.1%). On average, chemical terrorism incidents resulted in 51 injuries (mean range across agents: 2.5-1,622.0) and seven deaths (mean range across agents: 0.0-224.3) per incident. Nerve gas incidents (2.1%) had the highest mean number of injuries (n = 1,622) and fatalities (n = 224) per incident. The highest number of chemical terrorism incidents occurred in South Asia (29.5%), Western Europe (16.8%), and Middle East/North Africa (13.0%). The most common targets were private citizens (19.5%), of which groups of women (22.8%) were often the specific target. Incidents targeting educational institutions often specifically targeted female students or teachers (58.1%).ConclusionsChemical terrorism incidents rarely occur; however, the use of certain chemical terrorism agents, for example nerve gas, can cause large mass-causality events that can kill or injure thousands with a single use. Certain regions of the world had higher frequency of chemical terrorism events overall, and also varied in their frequencies of the specific chemical terrorism agent used. Data suggest that morbidity and mortality vary by chemical category and by region. Results may be helpful in developing and optimizing regional chemical terrorism preparedness activities.

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Undocumented immigration and terrorism: Is there a connection?

Publications

Undocumented immigration and terrorism: Is there a connection?

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