A Department of Homeland Security draft report said Muslim male immigrants in the U.S. from Sunni Muslim areas should be monitored "on a long-term basis." A DHS rep said the report had since been altered but didn't say how.
The publication Foreign Policy reported it had obtained a draft copy of the report that examined 25 terrorist attacks in U.S. from October 2001 and December 2017. The draft report concluded that authorities should be interested in "dedicating resources to continuously evaluate persons of interest" and suggesting that immigrants to the U.S. be tracked on a "long-term basis."
The report was produced at the request of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan on Jan. 22, Foreign Policy noted.
The report identified a broad swath of Sunni Muslim residents as being potentially "vulnerable to terrorist narratives," based on a range of risk indicators, such as being young, male, and having national origins in "the Middle East, South Asia or Africa, Foreign Policy said.
News of the draft report comes after the DHS and Justice Department released a study on Jan. 16 that charged that three out of every four individuals convicted of international terrorism or terrorism-related offenses were immigrants, Foreign Policy said.
Critics of the January report complained that it had methodological issues and "cherry-picked" data to support the Trump administration's immigration policies, Foreign Policy said.
A Customs and Border Protection representative told Foreign Policy that the draft report has already been modified and was “improperly" released.
"More specifically, the initial draft assessment in your possession not only is still undergoing internal CBP review, but, at the time of its improper disclosure, did not reflect a large number of substantive comments and revisions that have since been made to subsequent versions of the document as a result of CBP's internal and external review process," the CBP representative said.
President Donald Trump campaigned on instituting a ban on Muslim immigration before he won the presidential election in 2016, which morphed into a travel ban that included several Muslim-majority countries, The Hill reported.
That ban was challenged in court and the U.S. Supreme Court announced last month that it would review the measure, The Hill said.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.