N.Y. Justice Dem: White Male Terrorism Is ‘Biggest Issue’ in US

A New York City congressional candidate endorsed by the same progressive group that backed Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) called “white male domestic terrorism” the “biggest issue in our country.”

Democrat congressional hopeful Jamaal Bowman ranked “white male domestic terrorism” as America’s most urgent problem while downplaying the issue of illegal immigration at a Monday appearance on “The Hardy Report” podcast.

“There’s no evidence that the crime in this country, particularly the heinous crime, is committed by our immigrant neighbors. So again, it’s a false narrative,” Bowman said. “The biggest issue in our country is white male domestic terrorism. That’s the biggest issue and that’s what we need to deal with straight away.”

Bowman, a Bronx middle school principal, is running an insurgent bid to unseat incumbent Democrat representative Eliot Engel in New York’s 16th district. The challenger’s focus on “white male domestic terrorism” over illegal immigration puts him at odds with the priorities of American voters—23 percent of respondents called immigration the “most important problem facing the country” in a recent Gallup survey, the highest measured since the pollster first began mentioning the issue in 1993.

Responding to the criticism that Democrats are weak on borders, Bowman claimed that “99.9 percent of our immigrant neighbors that come here, come here in peace and come here looking for asylum.” He touted an open borders policy, arguing that “so-called immigrants are coming” into the United States “because we were in their backyards causing havoc and destruction in their homes.”

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Bowman also misrepresented immigrants seeking asylum in the United States. According to the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), only 20 percent of immigrants seeking asylum were found to be legitimate asylum seekers in 2017, up from 17 percent in 2016. The remaining 80 to 83 percent are not all explicitly denied asylum—in the past, many of those claiming asylum skipped their follow-up hearings after being released from custody inside the United States. {snip}

Bowman’s progressive agenda does not stop at the border. He is also a proponent of the Green New Deal, the multi-trillion dollar program touted by Justice Democrat heavyweight Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He said taxes on Wall Street could pay for the environmentalist legislation, even as his fellow liberals—including AOC-endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.)—say such taxes would fall way short of covering the costs of shifting the country away from traditional energy sources.

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