Nearly 100,000 Somali refugees have been admitted into the United States since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, including 9,020 during fiscal year 2016 and 2,279 in the last two months alone.
According to the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center database, between the al-Qaeda terror attacks in September 2001 and today, 99,726 Somali refugees have been resettled in the U.S.
Of those refugees, 99.6 percent are Muslims, reflecting the religious makeup of Somalia’s population, which is almost entirely Muslim, predominantly Sunni.
The largest numbers of Somali refugees arriving in the country since 9/11 have been settled in Minnesota (almost 16,000) and Ohio (more than 7,500), with sizeable communities also in Texas, New York and Arizona.
Monday’s attack on the Ohio State University campus in Columbus, Ohio, was carried out by a student who, according to law enforcement officials, was a Somali refugee who came to the U.S. in 2014, after living for several years in Pakistan.
Abdul Razak Ali Artan drove his car into pedestrians before getting out and stabbing people with a butcher knife, injuring eleven people in total. A police officer shot and killed him.
