Malik Faisal Akram took four hostages in the Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas on the morning of January 15, 2022. Akram let one of the hostages go and the other three eventually escaped. FBI agents then shot and killed Akram when they entered the synagogue. Fortunately, Akram’s terrorist attack ended without any innocent people being murdered or physically injured. Still, Akram’s attack provides some valuable lessons and insights to understanding foreign-born terrorism.

Akram was born in the United Kingdom and entered the United States in late December, likely through the Visa Waiver Program although he may have entered with a tourist visa. The Visa Waiver Program is available to most nationals from 40 different countries and it allows them to enter the United States without a visa for temporary travel. Those 40 countries are part of the Visa Waiver Program because their citizens have a low chance of overstaying their visas and becoming illegal immigrants, they share security data with the U.S. government, and they have similar levels of economic development.

Akram was investigated by British intelligence at some point but was later considered to not be a threat, so he likely wasn’t in the notoriously unreliable terrorism databases that should have flagged him. This is one reason why the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) system, which is used by Visa Waiver Program travelers to apply online for preapproval, likely didn’t stop Akram from traveling here. ESTA runs a biographic background check that should have caught Akram and it might have kept records of his terrorism investigation, unless he somehow traveled on false documents. Akram also had a criminal record and was convicted for theft and harassment in 2012, serving a stint in prison.

Clearly, no security or vetting procedure is perfect. Akram should have been flagged but he was never charged with terrorism offenses and he committed his earlier crimes years ago. The government will likely consider tightening ESTA by including more data in response to Akram’s attack, but that will never be enough. The Department of Homeland Security will continue to respond to future threats by adopting reforms that would have stopped some past attackers. Fundamentally, if somebody has not committed a previous crime or any action to indicate that he would be a terrorist then no screening system could keep him out. That does not mean that travel should end nor does it mean that the government should not undertake reasonable security actions that pass a cost-benefit test, it simply means that we cannot expect perfection.

Fortunately, Akram didn’t murder anybody in his attack. From January 1, 1975 to January 15, 2022, 198 foreign-born terrorists attempted or committed attacks on U.S. soil, murdering a total of 3,040 people and injuring 17,059. Those figures do not include injuries suffered by the terrorists of their deaths. Akram added to the total number of terrorists but he did not add to the total number of deaths or injuries, thankfully. The annual chance of a foreign-born terrorist murdering somebody in a terrorist attack is about 1 in 4.4 million per year and the annual chance of injuring somebody was about 1 in 775,000 per year, during that period.

Thirteen terrorists have entered the United States on the Visa Waiver Program and subsequently committed or attempted to commit attacks out of the roughly half-billion admissions of foreign travelers on the program. That’s one terrorist admission for about every 39 million admissions. Glen Cusford Francis was the only terrorist who entered on the Visa Waiver Program and murdered somebody in an attack when he committed a religiously-motivated assassination in Arizona in 1990. Francis was born in Trinidad and Tobago and immigrated to Canada where he received citizenship and was able to enter the United States without a visa.

Akram was born in the United Kingdom. Of the five terrorists who were born in the United Kingdom, all entered through the Visa Waiver Program. None of them have murdered or injured anybody in attacks on U.S. soil except for themselves. Four of those terrorists were Islamists and the fifth had a cockamamie plan to assassinate Donald Trump when he was running for office in 2016. At least two of them seem to have had serious mental health problems, which seems common among terrorists.

Akram’s attack provides an example of some common factors in terrorism.

First, most terrorists don’t successfully murder people. Out of the 198 foreign-born terrorists from 1975 until the Texas attack, 143 or 72 percent didn’t commit murder in their attacks. In many cases, such as in Texas, their failure to kill was due to incompetence, indecision, or insanity. Terrorists are motivated by religious, social, ideological, or political motives, but strong opinions on those issues combined with a desire to commit a violent action to further them seem to be correlated with other factors that make murder unlikely.

Second, terrorists disproportionately target Jews. Targeting Jews is less common among foreign-born terrorists with some notable exceptions. Native-born American terrorists are more likely to target Jews. The continuation of vicious anti-Semitism into the third decade of the 21^st century is a baffling reality, but we should expect it to continue.

Third, foreign-born terrorists rarely enter the United States illegally. Despite frequent warnings from Todd Bensman, it is far easier for most foreign-born terrorists to enter legally than illegally. No single person has been killed or injured in attacks on U.S. soil by a terrorist who entered illegally. The Colleyville attack happened in the border state of Texas and Akram still found it easier to fly into the United States through New York rather than flying to Central America, walking through Mexico, and paying a smuggler thousands of dollars to likely be apprehended by Border Patrol. There are many reasons to be concerned about illegal immigration, but terrorism is not one of them.

Fourth, terrorism vetting and screening will never be perfect. Terrorism screening keeps out many more non-terrorists than terrorists and that’s probably an acceptable price to pay considering how few terrorists there are in the world and the damage they could inflict. We need to accept a certain amount of risk, as discomforting as that is to the victims.

It’s important to understand how terrorism and immigration interact so that the government does not overreact or underreact to threats. In today’s world, overreactions are much more common. Akram’s anti-Semitic attack in Texas shows why terrorism is both so frightening and often fails.