The White House started its Countering Violent Extremism Summit Tuesday peddling a softer, community-based approach to battling homegrown terrorism and Islamic State recruiting within the U.S.
For weeks, the White House studiously denied that the summit would mainly focus on Islamic extremism. But after a weekend in which a self-declared Islamic State loyalist shot up a café in Copenhagen and an Islamic State group in Libya beheaded 21 Coptic Christian Egyptians, administration officials couldn’t deny the urgency of focusing on countering the jihadist threat.
“Today’s summit is urgent and essential,” Alejandro Mayorkas, deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, said in opening remarks at the summit. “Events in Australia, Canada and most recently in France, Belgium and Denmark, underscore the significance of the challenges we face in countering violent extremism.”
Vice President Joe Biden initiated the summit Tuesday afternoon with a roundtable of leaders from Los Angeles, Boston and Minneapolis-St. Paul, home to pilot programs launched last fall to develop community efforts to counter terror recruiting within their cities.
Tuesday’s agenda focused on domestic efforts to fight homegrown terrorism and foreign fighters and the threat of them returning to the U.S. to carry out deadly attacks. That domestic focus will continue Wednesday with opening remarks from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.
On Thursday, leaders from 60 nations will come together to focus on information-sharing and government action around the world to counter the Islamic State and other extremist group activity. President Obama will address the summit on Wednesday and Thursday.
The Justice Department launched the community-based pilot programs in Boston, Los Angeles and Minneapolis-St. Paul to bring together “community intervention teams,” consisting of religious and business leaders working with families — not law enforcement — to try to respond to the threat of homegrown radicalization.
The White House has specifically cited Minnesota as a leading example of cutting-edge programs to try to stop homegrown terrorism.
The Minneapolis-St. Paul area is a hotbed for Islamic radicalization. The area has the highest concentration of Somali immigrants in the country, and since 2007, more than 20 Somali-Americans have traveled back to Somalia and joined the terrorist group al-Shabaab.
“There’s a very strong effort that’s been going on for years, led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office and [the Department of Homeland Security] to really reach out to that community to try to blunt the recruitment efforts that are going on there,” a senior administration officials told reporters Monday.
Last year, U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger spent some time in the Somali immigrant community talking to friends and relatives of some of the men al-Shabaab recruited to find out how they thought it happened. According to Yahoo News, Luger found a similar thread to the stories: The friends and families had sensed an attitudinal shift before their loved ones left the Twin Cities to join the group, but they didn’t know whom to tell without running the risk of alerting the police.
Luger reached out to religious and business leaders in the area to create the intervention teams so that families and friends can alert them of suspicions without involving police.
The White House is deeming this community-based outreach a “whole of nation” approach.
“This is not about government, especially the federal government — the federal government doesn’t have all the answers,” a senior administration officials told reporters Monday on a conference call previewing the summit. “This is about building a comprehensive network to fight back against violent extremism, and we are explicitly recognizing the role that civil society plays, the private sector plays, and that families, etcetera can play in countering violent extremism.”
Although the intervention approach is softer than the long arm of the law, some critics say it is still too harsh.
Civil rights groups, such as the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, are wary of community outreach programs aimed at combating violent extremism.
The center says the groups unfairly target Muslim groups and contribute to a greater culture of Islamophobia.
The group also argues that the U.S. government, specifically the FBI, has used counter-extremism programs in Minnesota to “spy on” the Somali Muslim community.
“With the recent increase in [countering violent extremism]-related programming, does this mean there will be increased surveillance of Muslim communities as well?” the Brennan Center asked Tuesday in a release.
In previewing the summit, the White House on Monday continued to avoid stereotypes when discussing communities vulnerable to extremist recruiting.
“I think one is that we want to be clear that the evidence doesn’t show that there’s any particular community, there’s no profile that we can point to say this person is from this community, is going to be radicalized to violence,” an official said.
While extremist groups may target a variety of communities across the country, it’s clear that the government sees the Islamic State as a top threat and is under increasing pressure to try to prevent homegrown radicalization.
U.S. intelligence officials last week warned that some foreign fighters who trained with the Islamic State in Syria have already returned to the U.S — although they didn’t say how many.
“We know what we know, but we understand there is intelligence we don’t have,” Nicholas Rasmussen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, testified on Capitol Hill. “But it’s possible there are great numbers.”
Roughly 20,000 people around the world, more than 3,000 from Western countries, have joined the Islamic State and other extremist groups. As many as 150 American residents or citizens have tried to reach the Syrian war zone, while a few dozen have made it, according to FBI Director James Comey.
Francis Taylor, Homeland Security’s undersecretary for the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, last week said the U.S. intelligence community isn’t aware of a “specific, credible, imminent” threat to the homeland but stressed that “recent events have demonstrated the need for increased vigilance both at home and abroad.”
Over the past few years, Taylor said federal authorities have thwarted several bombing plots from homegrown violent extremists, including plans to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the U.S. Capitol, and commercial establishments in downtown Chicago, Tampa, Fla. and Oakland, Calif.
