Colorado attack sparks MAGA calls for Muslim travel ban, mass deportations

In the aftermath of a firebombing at a pro-Israel rally in Boulder, Colorado, prominent MAGA-aligned figures have responded with sweeping calls for anti-Muslim immigration policies, including mass deportation and travel bans.

On Sunday, several people sustained burns after an assailant hurled Molotov cocktails and a makeshift flamethrower into a crowd of pro-Israel protesters. Police arrested a suspect later identified by Fox News as Mohamed Sabry Suleiman, an Egyptian national allegedly residing illegally in the United States since March 2024.

Far-right activist and self-defined "proud Islamophobe" Laura Loomer seized upon the attack to issue a series of inflammatory posts on X, declaring:

"It appears Mohamed Suleiman, the Muslim man who carried out the Islamic terrorist attack, is an immigrant from Kuwait who arrived in the US two years ago under Joe Biden's open-border policy."

Loomer went further, calling for the deportation of all Muslims residing in the US, as well as a total travel ban on Muslim entry into the country.

"Islam is the greatest threat to humanity," she wrote, urging Republican lawmakers to act decisively.

She demanded that Congress implement a ban on forcibly expelling non-American Muslims, and that current Muslim residents be monitored and deported "en masse".

"It’s not enough for Republican candidates to simply say 'deport illegals'," Loomer wrote.

"They need to explicitly speak out about Islam ... We are being killed and maimed by Muslim immigrants because Republicans were too afraid of being called 'Islamophobes'."

Loomer, 31, has long been associated with Trump personally and the wider MAGA movement and is known for her incendiary racist rhetoric. Media reports have linked her to Trump, including an April 2024 visit after which several top National Security Council (NSC) officials were dismissed.

CNN and Axios both reported that Loomer had presented Trump with claims of disloyalty among NSC staff, prompting a purge, while Loomer has been known to travel personally with Trump as an unofficial adviser. 

Stephen Miller, a senior Trump advisor, White House deputy chief of staff and the architect of the administration's unprecedented anti-immigration policies, blamed the Boulder incident on illegal immigration and former president Joe Biden.

"Immigration security is national security. The Biden administration gave this man a visa and then a work permit. He overstayed them both. This is why we must keep them out and send them back," Miller said.

Representative Brandon Gill, another MAGA diehard, echoed these sentiments, blaming Democratic immigration policy directly for the attack: "Suleiman had overstayed both a visa and a work permit. This is the cost of lax enforcement under Democratic leadership."

Republican State Representative Randy Fine also weighed in, using the attack as an opportunity to criticise progressive Muslim members of Congress.

"For those who wonder why I say Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib support Muslim terror, I’ll quote their comments from their personal and official X accounts about today’s firebombing of Americans by an illegal immigrant from Egypt," he wrote, without citing specific posts.

Federal and state authorities issued more measured responses. FBI Director Kash Patel labelled the incident a "terrorist attack".

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X: "We are united in prayer for the victims of the terrorist attack in Boulder. Terrorism has no place in our great country."

The political fallout from the Boulder attack has become yet another flashpoint in US culture war rhetoric fuelled by MAGA activists and the Trump administration.

With MAGA-aligned figures framing it as evidence for sweeping anti-Muslim measures, critics warn that such rhetoric risks fuelling or even giving a pretext to  Islamophobic policies and collective punishment against migrants.