After a deadly vehicle-ramming attack in New Orleans, Louisiana, during the New Year holiday, president-elect Donald Trump has falsely insinuated that the mass killing was carried out by an immigrant, despite the fact that the accused perpetrator was a U.S.-born citizen.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who is also a U.S. Army veteran, drove his vehicle onto Bourbon Street in the early hours of New Year’s Day, killing at least 14 people and injuring dozens more. He was killed by police following a shootout with officers after he exited his vehicle.
Much attention has been placed on Jabbar’s supposed support for ISIS, based on a flag in the vehicle he used to carry out the killings. The motivation for the killing, however, may be more complex, as Jabbar had recorded his frustrations with family members — including his plans to kill them before changing his mind on the way to New Orleans from Texas. Jabbar also had myriad financial troubles, court records from that state have indicated.
On Thursday, after law enforcement had initially stated they believed Jabbar had possible accomplices, the FBI concluded that he had acted alone.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released a statement condemning Jabbar’s actions.
“If reports that the perpetrator was a man with a history of drunk driving and spousal abuse who plotted to kill his family before supposedly experiencing dreams telling him to join Daesh are true, then his crime is the latest example of why cruel, merciless, bottom-feeding extremist groups have been rejected by the overwhelming majority of the Muslim world — from Islamic scholars, to mosques, to organizations, and to individual Muslims,” the statement from CAIR said, adding that the organization “stand[s] in solidarity with the people of New Orleans.”
Hours after the killings took place, Trump — who frequently peddles blatantly false, far right talking points about migrants living in the U.S. — incorrectly claimed that the attack was enabled by the Biden administration’s immigration policies, insinuating that Jabbar was not a U.S.-born citizen.
“When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true,” Trump wrongly claimed in a Truth Social post.
Trump went further, errantly elaborating that the “crime rate in our country is at a level that nobody has seen before,” despite figures showing that crime is actually lower now than it was when he was last in office.
In a subsequent post that appears to allude to the attack (or possibly to an exploding vehicle outside a Trump-branded hotel in Las Vegas, or to both), Trump claimed that the country “is a disaster.”
“This is what happens when you have OPEN BORDERS, with weak, ineffective, and virtually nonexistent leadership,” Trump added — again, insinuating that the attack was somehow related to immigration policy, which is false.
Trump repeated his claim — which had been thoroughly debunked by this point — in yet another post, again wrongly writing that Biden’s supposed “open border policy” led to the mass killing.
Trump’s false statements appear to have originated from a report by Fox News, which had initially and errantly reported that Jabbar had crossed the Texas border from Mexico, giving viewers the impression that he was an immigrant. The network has since corrected the record, but the misinformation has continued to spread.
Several Republican lawmakers have since parroted Trump’s false talking points, wrongly asserting that immigration policy had something to do with the attack. Among the more notable figures to peddle that lie is House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), who erroneously blamed “wide open borders” for what had happened.
The insinuation that the driver in this tragedy was an immigrant feeds into a longstanding — and similarly false — talking point espoused by far right conservatives that immigrants bring more crime to the U.S. But that assertion has been disproven numerous times, with studies showcasing that immigrants living in the U.S. are far less likely to commit crimes than are U.S.-born citizens.
Trump is trolling the American people “with outright misinformation and lies,” MSNBC host Jonathan Lemire said on Thursday morning, noting that the president-elect has yet to correct his false claims.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) also criticized Trump’s posts.
“Trump is intentionally lying about the attacker being an immigrant — he wasn’t,” Murphy wrote in a post on X. “Why does it matter? Because he is going to use episodes of violence to justify his crack down on immigrants and his attack on dissent — whether the facts line up or not.”
Angry, shocked, overwhelmed? Take action: Support independent media.
We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.
Over the last months, each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming. But, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November, “Together, we are more powerful than Trump.”
Indeed, the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders, but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups. Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty, staff, and students refusing to comply. And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity.
It will be a long fight ahead. And as nonprofit movement media, Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance.
As we undertake this life-sustaining work, we appeal for your support. Please, if you find value in what we do, join our community of sustainers by making a monthly or one-time gift.