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SALT LAKE CITY — Although Jews make up only 2.4% of the American population, 60% of all religious-based hate crimes are perpetrated against them, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray told a Senate committee Tuesday.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, asked Wray if that number has gone up since the Oct. 7 attacks against Israel by Hamas militants. While the director said it's too early to have definitive numbers, he said the attack could serve as "inspiration" for antisemitic threats.
"I would expect that," he said. "But, I think that the point that I was trying to make there, which I really think Americans need to understand, is how wildly disproportionate — if you could ever use a word like proportionate in something like this — that is. ... This is a group that has the outrageous distinction of being uniquely targeted and they need our help."
Hamas' actions in the Middle East could inspire the greatest terror threat against the United States since ISIS, Wray said in his opening statement to the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
"Here in the United States, our most immediate concern is that violent extremists — individuals or small groups — will draw inspiration from the events in the Middle East to carry out attacks against Americans going about their daily lives," he told senators. "That includes not just homegrown violent extremists inspired by a foreign terrorist organization, but also domestic violent extremists targeting Jewish or Muslim communities."
Bomb threats at several Utah synagogues disrupted annual celebrations of Simchat Torah earlier this month. In 2022, the FBI tracked 1,305 anti-Jewish hate crimes and 205 anti-Muslim hate crimes, out of 2,044 hate crimes based on religious bias.
Wray said extremist messaging is spread in large part on social media, but urged citizens to alert authorities if they notice anything in their communities.
"What we really need is people — eyes and ears in the community — letting us know when they see something of concern so that law enforcement can take appropriate action," Wray said. "People sometimes overlook that piece, but some guy goes into Home Depot and wants to buy a bunch of ball bearings and fertilizer and doesn't seem to know anything about what either one could be used for. We want the guy in Home Depot calling law enforcement saying something's off."
During the same committee hearing, Romney also hammered Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over the increased number of migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Pointing to a chart showing the number of encounters along the southern border increasing, Romney said, "This is the point, Secretary Mayorkas, when you came into office and if that were my record, I would resign in shame or I would have fashioned a piece of legislation designed to solve that problem and worked like crazy to get it passed.
"I don't think you've done either one of those things."
In his testimony to the committee, Mayorkas said the Department of Homeland Security has increased the number of law enforcement personnel along the border and expanded legal pathways to entry. He asked the senators for $8.7 billion to fund personnel to stop fentanyl moving into the country and provide additional resources to Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
"Progress has been made, but more funding is required to manage the unprecedented flow of hemispheric migration and to increase our efforts to combat the transnational criminal organizations ruthlessly trafficking fentanyl and other deadly illicit drugs," Mayorkas said.
